News for the Mill Gatehouse Renovation Crew — a poem
December 26, 2024
This poem was written by Pat Ranzoni as an expression of gratitude in honor of the Thanksgiving holiday in 2024.
Wherever in the world that t.v. wall is, she is shocked
realizing those magazine covers behind the newsman
are “Life,” all at once hearing the rumble, loud, of the paper
machines at her father’s mill. The paper being made, then
“the sound of orcas crying” to Dorr at the Credit Union
across the road witnessing the demolition.
The echoes of wood crashing down, cut, hauled
to the woodyard by generations. Mountains of it
she’d watch for, returning home along the River Road.
Conveyors. The pounding sound of logs, dropping, heard
outback and across the river.
She wonders if the person whose study this is with
her people’s paper on the wall can hear the roaring of the
machines making it, Lamarche scheduling shifts in her sleep,
dreams of her union co-workers, missed, rising above the pulp
grinder, now displayed, that Pickoski and many more tended
for years, their hands taking the shape of the pick poles. If
Lamarche sees the t.v. exhibit, having saved antique copies of
her own in her mill office, now gone, and “her” people
in her heart still strong.
If those network viewers ever think twice about or
even notice the most prized paper out there and calls her
husband to come see the treasure of her childhood. “Look!
We made that!” He smiles with pride, too, Ranzoni and sons
and grandsons having cut and hauled tons to sell there
’til the end. And he’s heard her say how she’s of the race with
skin the color of paper-machine pulp so gladly pitches in.
She wonders what that person who owns that wall,
loving “Life,” would think to know that Stubbs is collecting
famous Penobscot ash dinner baskets to hang from the ceiling,
“once upon a time” owners marked, the art of it, being foreman,
visionary, his Mrs. lifting, cleaning, brushing. Wonders if they
see it on the news, too, paper his father or he himself
could have made, rigged and shipped on the tide. Imagine
Grunwald the elder this very day fixing, painting, rescuing
the last old building—hey—exactly where people got paid for
making that very paper on that very television wall!
And the Gilley brothers knocking down and restoring
the old guard shack as some called it, once housing security,
to last another near century proving what they did here, and
how they would swell with pride seeing that display behind
the news knowing how it was done because they did it.
And Lamontanaro, granddaughter and daughter
of the mechanical engineering going into such paper as these
magazines were made of, cellular memories being the inkwell
from which she draws to document as much as she can, still
giving tours in spirit to this day as she did summers
earning her way.
And Wahl, figuring, installing, and penning it all in awe
and the spirit of it, too, along with a force of knowledge-
keepers like Bagley devoted to the rescue of what’s on that wall
in someone’s den somewhere far from here, with wicked news
on the air. And the masters of the best paper in the world, when
only the best would do, turning over in their graves.
— Patricia Smith Ranzoni
As published in the Ellsworth American December 9, 2024.