Sudden Beauty
Sudden Beauty is when the right song comes on the radio when you are driving during the golden hour through a beautiful place. Or when a car blasting a song with great personal meaning to you drives by right when you needed to hear it. Or when an alignment of chance + time + place + maybe music makes things feel magic. It could be that the soundtrack to that moment in your life is being played without your will but in perfect accordance with it. A detail placed in your life, just so.
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“Alone” in the forest someone drops something from the top of an old pine tree, knocking branches and trunk back and forth until it lands at my feet—one sufficiently gnawed vertebra now supine on the pine duff.
In a movie, this is the plot point. In life, it's the first day of school. The school bus is ten minutes away on the other side of the forest. The tide is high but it’s just a detail, too. I pick up the bone, set it down in the middle of the light, meet the bus, walk home with my children, apples, too, falling from the trees, and one leaf skittering across the shadows we leave behind.
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Walking with Holli along the waterfront in Belfast past the venue where my wedding party was held eleven years ago, another wedding party was happening. "The vibes are good," said some friends we'd walked past minutes prior, everyone bathed in ridiculous golden light. Tucked behind a column, close to the open doors of the venue, sat Graham Platner. A glorious brass band made a plea about how we should feel about this moment. Holli and I exchanged glances, Graham took a sip of his drink and we (those among us wearing crocs) walked directly into the ocean.[1]
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The ocean contains whales, as you know, but I have not known the Penobscot River to be home to them, even at the mouth of Penobscot Bay.[2] Yet this summer, everyone has been seeing “the whale”—which is perhaps whales rather than a singular being—in the river and near the bay.
One day, I decided to take a Zoom call at one of my favorite riverine places—akʷàhǝsotik or stepping ashore place (also known as Fort Point State Park)—where the whale had recently been spotted. I was on a call with a lively group of archivists from the Interco(a)stal project and listened with my eyes on the water. We spoke of privateers, shipping, enslavement, the damage that comes from inaccessible archives and tidy narratives. I saw three porpoises on a mission, otherwise "just" water and clouds. At the end of the conversation, I asked if my colleagues like to look at the water for a moment and flipped my camera around for them. Everyone agreed that even without a whale, it was good to look at this horizon.
As my finger pressed the button to hang up, other fingers on the beach started pointing frantically to a whale that had just fluked. My colleagues were gone, the whale had arrived, and the few children scattered about on the beach were shrieking.
We watched the whale[3] cross over toward Orland/Surry then come back over in our direction and surface to breathe a handful of times as they swam perpendicular to the shore.
“Do you know how much I love whales?” asked a five-year-old with a ziplock bag of peanuts who had posted up next to me.
“Tell me,” I said.
“I would die for a whale. I like your earrings. Mine are like them.”
Mine are like yours, I thought—her whale feelings. When I was a few years older than her, I wrote a story about a whale watching boat getting too close to a whale and the protagonist jumping in after them. I don't remember what happened next. I think the story ended there.
The tide was going down and I drove home along the southern edge of Cape Jellison, following the river and the whale who was following the fish back out to sea.
the whale at akʷàhǝsotik
[1] A few weeks later, I dream I run into Graham again and give him a piece of my mind. The only dialogue I remember was an exchange on whether or not we had a shared definition of "power” and the inherent responsibilities therein. I don’t think we do. (I submitted a job application along with several personal recommendations to the Platner campaign two days before the final shit storm hit the fan. 😵💫 Which is to say, I'm still looking for the right job[s] to apply to—let me know if you hear of anything, and thank you.)
[2] There is the minke whale who washed up here a year or so ago. Another whale who washed up in Winterport back in the 70s. Two beluga whales who swam up the Penobscot in the 1950s. But generally speaking, in recent years, the Penobscot River has not been a very whale-y place.
[3] Definitely a humpback, my whale biologist colleague assured me later when I sent him this video.
New Work in the World
The Tinker on the Marsh project has taken over my writing brain. Below are the most recent editions—generally speaking, it comes out weekly, though I'm about to embark on a few weeks' pause as I prep two marsh-related stories for Atlantic Black Box's Interco(a)stal project (happening in Bath, Maine on October 17—come! RSVP here.)
#13 The Walrus Toe Bone
#14 The Song
#15 The Maps
#16 The Hose in the Muck
#17 The Pause
I would so much rather this work be read by folks who are interested than for it to only be read by people with access to (financial) wealth. For a gift subscription, click here (and if you can swing it, the support of a paid subscription is also very welcome.)
Currents
Taking In
📖 Land by Maggie O'Farrell
📖 Ghost in the Throat and Said the Dead by Doireann Ní Ghríofa, this interview with her on turning archives into narrative, excavating history, etc.
🎵 "Snowfall" from Colin Stetson and Brìghde Chaimbeul's new album
🐋 Speaking of whales, thanks to Grace for introducing me to this podcast episode, featuring the brilliant and insightful Dr. Alexis Pauline Gumbs.
🏴🇮🇪 Thanks to Jillian for recommending this episode of the Blindboy Podcast: The History of The English Working Class with Professor Carl Chinn
🕊️ the snowy egrets passing through
🍅 tomatoes tomatoes tomatoes
🌿 mugwort
bulldozer in an empty field
Redistribution Opportunities
💸 Support for a Waldo County Mother Facing Immigration Court
Upcoming Things
Check out the full event schedule for Maine Lit Fest!
An Evening with Alexis Pauline Gumbs
Friday, October 2, 5–7 p.m. in Waterville, Maine
In celebration of the third Maine Lit Fest, award-winning poet, scholar, and Queer Black Feminist Love Evangelist Alexis Pauline Gumbs reads from and discusses her newest book, Primary: After and With Alma Thomas, about the twentieth-century modern artist best known for her bright, mosaic-like abstract paintings. The Q&A will be moderated by Assistant Professor Sonya Donaldson of African American Studies, and a reception will follow to kick off the Maine Lit Festival. Free event with RSVP.
IN THE NEWS: You Can't Build What You Can't Imagine: adrienne maree brown on Movements, Power, and Political Possibility
Saturday, October 3, 2026, 6–8:00 p.m.
Gordon Center for Creative and Performing Arts (Performance Hall) 4000 Mayflower Hill Drive,Waterville, ME
Deeply influenced by Octavia E. Butler and speculative fiction, NYT-bestselling author and activist adrienne maree brown champions imagination as profound political work along with the notion of dreaming new systems before we can build them. Moderated by Assistant Professor Onnesha Roychoudhuri of Creative Writing, this special In the News conversation will explore the challenge of translating radical imagination into collective power and enduring movements. Discover the inherent pleasure in activism and learn how small actions can organically grow into sweeping systemic change. Consider how communities can confront harm without giving up on one another and rewrite the narrative of accountability. Free event with RSVP.
Atlantic Black Box's Interco(a)stal project
Saturday, October 17 in Bath, Maine
RSVP here (free)
Interco(a)stal: Reading Between the Ribs of Maine's Maritime History is a yearlong, place-based project that uses monument reinterpretation as a framework for historical recovery, artistic exploration, and civic dialogue.
Through archival research, artistic intervention, community engagement, and a process of narrative return—bringing stories, histories, and knowledge back into the communities, landscapes, and public spaces from which they emerged—participants are working together to uncover overlooked dimensions of Maine's maritime past and explore how they might change the way we understand this monument and the histories it represents.
Interco(a)stal will culminate in a public WHERE walk and site activation on October 17, 2026 in Bath, Maine. This daylong, multi-sensory, embodied encounter with the City of Ships will invite participants to engage Maine's maritime history through multiple lenses and ways of knowing while exploring what it means to "read between the ribs" of official narratives.
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