Robert P. Tristram Coffin

Bunyan's Lake
by Robert P. Tristram Coffin

This poem about how Moosehead Lake in Maine got its shape appeared in Primer for America, by Maine poet Robert P. Tristram Coffin (1892-1955). Coffin attributed the tale to his father's hired man, Tom McCue.

Perhaps I'm just deficient in visual imagination, but I have trouble seeing an image of Paul Bunyan's backside in the map of Moosehead Lake, from whatever angle I try.

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One day Paul Bunyan got red-hot,
Logging Katahdin, like as not,
And he sat down smack on the snow
And thought of nothing an hour or so.

He sat as the hot lumbering man
Keeps from sitting if he can,
For hot pants and the earth gone cold
Make bad bedfellows, as I’m told.

Paul felt pleasant at the first
Although great clouds of hot steam burst
Up around his broad base section
And rolled for miles in each direction.

Then Paul felt only moderately well,
Then cold as Charity, Let a yell
Out of him, and tried to rise,
But cold Maine had him by the thighs!

He fetched a grunt that went clean to
Fort Kent and chilly Caribou,
He sweated, strained, he grunted low,
Fetched one last heave. His pants let go.

But they let go of Paul, and he
Of his whole back pants went free,
He bolted home to get a bale
Of wool to patch up his cold tail.

Paul learned a lesson he never forgot,
And if you doubt me, there’s the spot
Where Moosehead Lake spreads out to mind
People of Paul’s broad shape behind.

Moosehead Lake