Sunday Morning Ride on the Peshtigo River Trail
Chickadees, snowshine, tourmaline skies; Blue jays, jack pine, solitude mine.
Chickadees, snowshine, tourmaline skies; Blue jays, jack pine, solitude mine.
We “go thrifting,” my daughter and I, because it’s again cool to be uncool and because she can’t yet hear the murmurs of each discarded thing. I dread finding items I’ve already cast off at the Goodwill on Oneida street; I prepare to glance away awkwardly, pretending to see something that interests me in the … More A Confederacy of Dunces and Castoffs
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
Sometimes you are hauled backward before you can move forward; you get on a plane in the dark in Nashville and head south to Atlanta before touching down in Milwaukee where someone you love waits in the sleeting rain to drive you back and pour you into a warm, flightless bed. Sometimes the moon draws … More The Insufferable Logic of Tides
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
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.
An old house, these woods / sunlight drips through leaky trees / on the forest floor /