PUMPKIN MOON IN MASSACHUSETTS - John Shane - A love poem addressed to my then unborn daughter…‘Who are you, intimate, yet unseen stranger?’…A companion poem to ‘Earth Mother (For The Midwife)’
‘You've thrown the worst fear/That can ever be hurled/Fear to bring children/Into the world‘ wrote a young Bob Dylan to the ‘Masters Of War’. I’d say the same today to those denying the climate crisis
CLICK ON THE PLAY BUTTON ABOVE at the right hand side of the page to listen to John Shane read his poem…
When my first daughter - who now has children of her own - was born in Massachusetts in 1985, the world seemed a very different place and America seemed a very different country to what it is becoming today….there was so much hope in the air.
I think that the hope that we felt back then is evident in this optimistic poem which reads quite like a journal entry.
The poem is built from simple notation of small details of the everyday things that were happening at the time it was written, but it also touches on universal themes in a way that makes it as seem as relevant in 2025 as it was when it was written decades ago.
In fact, it’s the poem’s specificity - the way that it focuses so closely on the specifics of the moment - that gives it its universality - its wider significance.
I remember that when I was studying French at school for university entry exams, one of our set texts was Voltaire’s ‘Candide’.
‘Candide’ is a satirical novel that mocks the philosophy of Voltaire’s contemporary, Leibniz, by following the trials and tribulations that a young Frenchman named Candide goes through, in which he suffers every imaginable kind of setback while traveling in search of truth through a war-torn and plague-ravaged Europe, with his philosopher mentor, Pangloss, always insisting, as the next disaster occurs, ‘all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds.’
After an endless series of dreadful events that cause Candide and his companions great suffering, the story ends with Candide giving up on Pangloss’s false philosophizing, and the last words of the novel, spoken by Candide are, ‘Il faut cultiver notre jardin’ - ‘We have to take care of our own garden’.
Candide comes to understand that, to have any hope of ‘fixing’ the wider world, we have to start by taking care of the small area of the world in which we live where we can make a difference, and, if enough people do that, the world at large will also be changed - not as a result of top-down edicts from politicians and governments - but through the collective efforts of countless ‘ordinary people’ all making their own individual contributions.
In the face of the threats we are confronted with today, we have to ‘dig in’ and strengthen and renew our sense of community among friends and those with whom we share common interests.
As a small contribution towards that end, I offer this poem today in gratitude to those who have subscribed to my publication and to all those who take the time to participate in any way in my little corner of the Substack community.
Thank you for being here….
(You can read the text of the poem below the photos that follow)
An orange moon is known as a ‘pumpkin moon’….
But, a ‘moon’ is also a month. And this poem has the title ‘Pumpkin Moon’ because it was written in the month in which pumpkins are seen everywhere in New England, where I was living at the time.
People come from far and wide to New England every year to view the famous ‘fall foliage’.
Pumpkins on the porch…
A famous landmark at a store along the Mohawk Trail that runs through the area where we were living at the time this poem was written…
Pumpkins on sale….
PUMPKIN MOON IN MASSACHUSETTS
John Shane
(Conway, Massachusetts.
27th. September, 1985.)
Harvest moon waxing over New England countryside
growing full and fat and round,
as the autumn leaves turn to famous fall foliage reds and golds;
Autumn’s child growing, too, in wife’s belly
that swells to match and then exceed
the pumpkins on roadside sale
all along the Mohawk trail:
Rows and rows of giant pumpkins
among the squash and ornamental corn
soon to deck a thousand whitewashed wooden porches
on this eastern shore of Turtle Island,
fruit of the seasons’ labour,
mother earth’s Autumn offspring,
born in answer to Spring’s wild rapture
and the dance of plough in furrow.
Still suspended in your watery domain,
head down, feet and fists kicking at the world outside
through that wall of skin,
we hear your heartbeat drumming out
your response to life’s as yet unasked questions.
Who are you, intimate, yet unseen stranger?
You have already shared our lives these nine long months,
and yet we do not know you
What will be your name, your gender?
What will be your fate and future?
We have kept watch over our dreams
and kept a weather eye on the world around us
looking for signs of any kind.
What can I now set down for you
to read at some distant future time
about the last few days before your birth?
An earthquake shook Mexico City yesterday,
and a hurricane tore up the eastern coast of the USA.
Is there any significance in your arriving
at the same time as Halley’s Comet
that comes only once in seventy years?
Coincidence or synchronicity?
Is there a pattern to discern?
I claim no special knowledge
of your nature,
but am expecting to lear
My daughter - to whom I addressed in this poem without knowing if she would be a boy or a girl - all grown-up, with her husband, surrounded by pumpkins while expecting her own first child…
I can perceive the hope for a better future and love for your daughter. A lucky daughter to have a dad like you.
🌝🌝🌝🌝