Halfway North

So my daylist is earnest indie sad girl carnival oatmeal Sunday and

meanwhile advertised to me is a sweatshirt with a blue heron

in a beanie that I trip over myself to order, and the

throughline is a polka for this dung beetle

plucking up the detritus of the human race (one two)

patting it (two two) into one big misshapen shit-sphere

rolling it (one two three four) across this midwestern stage, picking up

conspiracy theories and measles and

real housewives painted nails and single use floss

and glacier melt and Bumble matches –

all the while peeling off little bits with its scratchy back legs

and feeding it to me one salty curated line at a time,

the gloried weight of winter sunsets streaked with

slaughterhouse breath and served up with a wry

chuckle – here is your original poem!  Would you like me

to summarize it?  Make it more Pushcarty?

Add a Venn diagram in which I show the influence overlap

between Mary Oliver and your fifth-grade teacher Mr. Nelson?

No?

F*@k me.

It’s already happened, at 56 I’m on the downslope,

the beetle stopped at the top for a minute, polka paused, hind legs in the air,

and now I’m rolling with it downhill from Lake Superior through the

Northwoods pines into the rolling Driftless and here comes

the beach, I am barreling into Lake Michigan

where I will sink like a lead ball like a black hole into its sea of ice,

where I will drown in all the things that have gone before

that I’ve drawn to myself and wrapped up in –

Who could have predicted that the genial beetle (one two)

gathering up everything we’ve already done (two two)

could give us only that which we’ve already done (three three three)

would roll it up would smear it around would revel in the stink

would add a little parsley garnish and give it back to us,

oh, give it to us

so good?