Editor’s Note: Perhaps relying on that extraordinary intuition that comes with being a poet, Sue Ellen Thompson felt a noticeable mood shift in her hometown a few years ago. Well before the Oxford community exploded with the dismissal of a popular town police chief, Thompson sensed that the town where she and her husband had lived for over two decades was becoming politically toxic. In response, Sue Ellen composed a poem about her dismay at the growing polarization but also her unaltered affection for Oxford.
It was a Small Town
which made everything
that happened there look
huge. The holiday parades
were endless, coursing
through the streets
like floodwater.
Parties overflowed
as well, channeled
by the narrow chambers
of what had once been
watermen’s modest houses.
Almost everyone who lived there
had been Somebody once.
Widowed now, or simply
retired, they inflicted
their formidable talents
on a one-room library
and small stone church.
In summer, when the town
sprayed weekly for mosquitos
after midnight, those
who remembered it was Tuesday
and brought their pets indoors
talked of it the whole next day,
inviting praise for their vigilance,
while those who’d left
their windows open
quietly prepared to die.
Low-lying and surrounded
on three sides by water, it afforded
little opportunity for harsh words
to evaporate. Instead, they often pooled
into final severings. Small disagreements
took root in the flood-softened earth
and spread like trumpet vine, dividing
entire neighborhoods into plaintiffs
and defendants. Why would anyone,
you might ask, want
to live there? Because every year
there was a day in early summer
when the first magnolia grandiflora
bent down low, distributing
its fleshy bowls to the poor and hungry,
of whom there were none and all
were lost in its vast perfume.
This video is approximately one minute in length.
This is just one of the poems Sue Ellen will read when she returns to the Stoltz Listening Room on September 25th for the first of four Spy Nights this fall to support the Avalon Foundation and the Talbot Spy. Her special guest will Beth Dulin, last year’s winner of the Eastern Shore Writers Association’s 2023 poetry competition. Beth will share some of those award-winning poems along with new ones. Tickets are available here.
Christine Farmar says
Beautifully written, Sue Ellen! Oxford was a wonderful town to grow up in. When my parents were alive I brought my own children back there to experience it. My youngest sister still lives in Oxford and when I visit I can still see the basic bones that brought me such joy.
Sue Ellen Thompson says
Yes, Christine, the “basic bones” are still there, thank goodness!
Maggie Andersen says
Love it! See you on the 25th, if not before! Maggie
susan delean-botkin says
beautifully done and felt, Sue Ellen. It is just so strange that so many come to Oxford because of how well run it was, how welcoming, how friendly – why change someplace so peaceful? So supportive of our neighbors?
Let’s spread happiness and kindness. Let the anger go…
Sue Ellen Thompson says
Exactly…spread those magnolia blossoms around!
Julie Wells says
Wonderfully written, Sue Ellen, with feelings of remorse and redemption. Unfortunately, it’s the bitterness that keeps erupting after each town meeting. like that weed in the garden that always comes back. Seems like Oxford is stuck in an unending blame game.
Rick Skinner says
Thank you, Ms. Thompson. Over here in Saint Michaels we have had a bit of toxicity seep into town affairs over the past few years. Nothing explosive, but definitely a change in the air. Residents and business owners are expected to take sides, studies are carried out to prove one side’s case over that of the other, and friendships have been strained at times. I suspect it’s part of a national – perhaps a global – mood of discontent and a good measure of suspicion that we are not all playing by the same rules or that “them’s that got shall get.”
If you would pass along that perfume you mention in your poem, I am certain we here in SM will do our best to have it waft on the winds that flow off the harbor and thereby lure what Lincoln called “the better angels of our nature” into the nostrils of all of us who do business and reside here. . ., I hope.
Sue Ellen Thompson says
I will try to bottle some of that perfume and send it over on the ferry!
J.P. Higgins says
If only Rocky, bowed and bloody,
Coulda known this place,
Coulda been Somebody.
Agnes Clancy says
Dear Sue Ellen,
I am waking up this morning to the flagrance of your poem.
Yes, Beauty remains the ultimate bond that should connect us!
Thank you for this gentle reminder.
Agnès Clancy
Agnes Clancy says
Dear Sue Ellen,
I am waking up this morning to the fragrance of your poem.
Yes,Beauty is the bond that should connect us.
Than you for this gentle and powerful reminder.
Agnès Clancy
Ann Ashby says
Another beautiful poem by Sue Ellen Thompson! We are so fortunate to have her here!