This week’s poem, by Jeanne Julian, tells of a Maine temporary housing program from some seasons ago for people seeking asylum. This poem was written before the recent intensification of ICE raids around the country. It might remind us now of the bare minimum a society can do for its new members fleeing danger: welcome them, and help them settle and thrive safely among us. 

Julian is author of “Like the O in Hope” and two chapbooks. Her poems and book reviews have been published in numerous journals,and have won awards from Reed Magazine, Comstock Review, I-70 Review, and Naugatuck River Review. She lives in South Portland.

Second Chances

With tourists long gone, the rental places
are shuttered, hollow. Old Orchard Beach
stretches empty, windblown, battered by
the cold Atlantic all through the Maine winter.

But in this off-season, families come to settle
in borrowed quarters. The Gull’s Nest,
Mermaid’s Rest, and Sandcastle wake to medleys
in unfamiliar grammars: Portuguese, Lingala, Oromo.

From troubled homelands these asylum-seekers
arrive like weathered seaglass washed ashore,
trying to envision a second chance here
as this vacated vacationland becomes their oasis.

There’s tranquility, João says. That’s why
I would like to live here though Northern sun
spares so little heat, and though these rooms
are only temporary, and though he’s kept

from working (despite his skills) and though
they all must depend on an agency for groceries,
cookpots, warm clothes delivered to a parking lot.
Doing well, by the grace of God, Marielena says.

If houses need souls inside as much as we need
their skeletons and skins, then for these dwellings
deserted by fair-weather occupants, call the presence
of the newcomers a second chance at grace, at gladness.

— By Jeanne Julian

Megan Grumbling is a poet and writer who lives in Portland. Deep Water: Maine Poems is produced in collaboration with the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. “Second Chances,” ©2026 by Jeanne Julian, appears by permission of the author.