If we were still in the old world, the six-weeks ago one, right now a girl with a make-up pencil might be standing before you with a mock frown – “stand still!” she’d say, drawing crow lines on your face, not crow’s feet, but lines to make you look like a crow, so you could … More There is no Wizard
And it’s the beginning of the end of the world – the regulars are turned out of the taverns, red-faced and singing defiantly, swaying and carrying their jackets under their arms into the almost-spring night, leaving behind the warm beer-sign bubbles, the cracked cheer of the bartenders, the pilsner philosophy of their fellow compatriots holding … More The Lights Flicker Once, Last Call in Suamico
We do not speak of the outside world – we whistle at the sun nosing around the fraying stratus clouds, lifting and dropping golden rays that splash our ankles and the winter-dead grasses – we call out to our dogs sniffing one another in turn, then exuberantly rolling in the dead carp that the bald … More By Tacit Agreement, Sunday at the Sensiba Trail
The heart is a muscle The heart is a fist it’s strong and it’s wary, this beast in my breast. My heart has been sleeping My heart has dreamed dreams – It wakens, now, flexing, it growls and it gleams. My heart is gone hunting, My heart leads me on Through starless dark forests, on … More Heart in Darkness
I am the reflection of a star on the dark glass of the river just before dawn breaks.
On the way home we pull off Highway 29 near Abbottsford to get gas. It’s been raining since we left Minneapolis. An Amish buggy clip clip clips into the auto parts store across the road. The horse doesn’t question, just stands there, dripping. Maybe they sell tractor parts, too; or maybe the man just wanted … More Saturday at the Abbotsford Auto Parts Store
October rain ebbs and flows and falls and falls and falls on the crooked pine trees and the roof, on the old swing set and the black driveway, on the cold, wet burn barrel and the American flag at the hundred year old house on Shady Lane where my parents live still. In the basement, … More The Disobedience of Rain
A pied-billed grebe has already paddled madly halfway across this cove (its crested head sporting a half-hearted mohawk, its body a sputtering vector moving toward the northwest, Lake Superior swollen like a too-observant eye) before I realize that it has darted out from under this porch that hangs over the water where I stand holding … More Somewhere, Another (The Pied Billed Grebe)
On the last Saturday of my 40s, I drive alone to Fish Creek to take the Sunset Bike Trail at Peninsula State Park. It occurs to me as I review the map, then fold it into small rectangles and put it into my back pocket, that if I live to be 96, it’s a decade … More 9.6 Miles in September
One common tern hovers high above Lake Michigan, then dives under the waves and back again, its path a ragged stitch from sky purpling like a bruise into water smooth as a mirror, and then back to sky again, pulling together heaven and earth like the closing of a weary eye.
Halfway North 