Finally, some negative degrees °F
(windchill double digits below zero)
to resume Minnesota winter bragging rights.

Weeping willows drape their bare
golden vine veils in sweet sadness.
They don’t scrape the cool blue sky

the way neighboring columnar red maples
reach upward to tickle
stray clouds. The eyes

of paper birches peer through
white bandages without giving away
what they see after dark.

You want to know what’s inside
those mysterious wooden crates
laying beside the finally frozen lake.

A rainbow of canoes, stacked
in their racks without a current purpose,
hovers around a bend in the trail.

Whittled from a 20-foot,
wind-damaged bur oak trunk,
the Lake of the Isles #2 pencil

sculpture leans but refuses
to fall. All that’s left
of a 180-year-old tree.

You’ve layered up and are ready

to meet the weather
poets in their secret crystalline den
above the roots and ridge.

It’s that time of year: deflated
Santas on brown lawns. A mob
of wild turkeys blocks the trail.

Clapping gloved hands, you begin
to shoo them away.
Some putt and scatter

into the street, stopping traffic.
A woman walking towards you asks
through a bared-tooth smile:

“Are you trying to kill them?”
“Why, yes, I am. You’re next. Now git,”
you want to reply.

You keep quiet though.
This is Minnesota, if looks could
kill, and other cliches

cling to the ice
precariously covering
the southern lakeshore.

The lake struggles to freeze
and stay frozen.
Patches of cold black
water hemmed in by plates

of gray ice partially covered
by a fresh coat of snow. I cannot hold
the monochrome transition
in my gloved hands. Wild ice

spiders spread their darkest-ink
mystery as river maps
to consult before asking:
thick or thin?

It begins with runs
along icy trails around
the Chain of Lakes.
I capture shifting views
of two bird sanctuaries
in the center of Lake of the Isles.

A beach walk at civil twilight
on Mother’s Day with a friend
I’ve known more than 40 years
reveals a seam
of shadowy dunes on one
of the Outer Banks’ barrier islands.

Almost losing my own mother
a month later,
I now mail her
a letter every Sunday
so she can build her own holm
of endangered species stamps:

from the Nashville crayfish,
piping plover, Mississippi
sandhill crane, and Key Largo cotton
mouse to the black-footed ferret,
golden-cheeked warbler, and
Florida panther. Speaking of large cats

(not the big roaring kind),
a cougar roams city neighborhoods
after dark in search of a territory island
to call his own. He barely makes it
through the Quaking Bog before
a violent encounter with an SUV ends it all.

Summer is for logging 40,000 steps
down and up the island among islands:
New York City. Side bar trips
to Roosevelt Island and Little Island
and an island of true song
created by Son Volt

one jubilant July evening
with the same friend I accompanied
to their first show
at the 7th Street Entry.
Every song on Trace perfect today
as it was in 1995.

A second trip to Cleveland
is for celebration only
when my niece weds her soul mate,
filling an old barn
to the brim
with their own island of love.

A quick stay in DC to explore AI
and not one island in sight,
authentic or not. The year passes
without a chance to visit my first island.
And I know the Vineyard
isn’t going anywhere.

Turning 60 requires its own
accumulation of rocks
and other fluvial
sediment. I mark the moment
by playing hooky from daily life.
I spend a night

at the Nicollet Island Inn,
so I can wake up on one
of the few inhabited islands
in the Mississippi River, once
a sacred Dakota birthing place.
I look out the window

to watch the river channel flow
beside a bank covered in
freshly fallen snow. I walk
the full circumference
of the island as a tourist
in my own town just for a day.

As I wait for a freight train
to pass, temporarily severing
the northern tip from the rest
of the island, I remember
no matter what else happens
“the rhythm of the river will remain.”

Note: The poem ends with a line from Jay Farrar’s song “Live Free.”

I am honored to have my poem “How to Build Your Own” included in the “Hot Water” issue of the literary journal Free the Verse.

You can read the poem here.

When the French Canadian groundhog
died while hibernating in its den,
its unseen shadow slipped
into the winter night

without a sound.
Then mine and yours
disappear too
into a shroud of clouds

blanketing a stretch
of overcast days.
In the vicinity
of a half-frozen lake,

giddy shouts echo
from a grove
of nearly bare
tamarack trees.

A few stubborn
golden needles
dangle from branches
above a cluster of wild

shadows

detached from their objects.
Finally the subjects
of their own stories,
they cut a hole in the ice

to make a swimming trough.
Diving into the darkness,
they create their own action
without having to tend

to the reaction.
Let them
have their moment,
you whisper.

Mostly human
silhouettes (and one or two
with tails) dart in
and out of the water.

Just as dusk descends, I turn off
all the lights, switch on
my rust-

colored Italian table lamp
to the lowest level
of warm glow.

It whispers to me:
“Let me shift
your mood to one of calm

that breeds trust.”

“How?” I ask. Silence.
The room still. Music
no longer lulling me

into a false sense
of urgency. Angry voices
in my head come unplugged.

My crepuscular fingers float
to the smooth surface before me.
Words with no ulterior motive

flicker as reflections
on the nearby bookcase.
Beautifully illegible.

Nothing more needs to be
said. The night is fully
charged. The dead cougar’s body

is being stuffed and will be
on display soon to educate us all
about happier endings

without SUVs on highways
or territory loss.
It will snow again.

I only want
to experience
it

one more time
the way I did
when I was 14.

The way I loved
merry-go-rounds
as a small child.

More! More! Before
I became so desperate
to jump off, utterly unable

to let go
of the horse. The one I rode
for over two decades

was all glass
and Polish vodka bottle shaped.
The more I loved it

as it galloped me
on water-worn limbs
further into the dark

spiral in the center
of everything, the more
I needed to ride it

till I ground its legs
down to their silica
granules of origin.

And that spot behind
the beach cottage garage
among the ripening

rose hips where those handmade
cedar shingle swings hung
from the sky—one for each

of us three girls.
That’s where I learned
the whole purpose of a swing

is to get higher

and higher.

It’s never enough. Whisper
euphoric recall into the ear
of another conch shell

as we stand, feet safely secured
in the sand,
till the next storm

washes it all
away. And then we do it
all over again

with the ruined beauty
of the dunes
our relentless guide.

I see you are wearing
your polka dot dress tonight.
I’m wearing mine too.

See.

Sometimes I forget to zip
up all the way.
Does that happen to you too?

I see you enjoy the dirty,
the dilapidated, the peeled.
Me too. Me too.

Did you suck your thumb
as a child? I never stopped.
And now I’m dead.

Correction. My creator that is.
I am very much a living work of art,
nearly 50 years old.

I see you know how
old buildings speak
while camouflaging what disturbs

us deep inside. When I cover
my mouth with my fingers like this,
everyone thinks I’m ashamed.

You and I know better.
How smiles and frowns begin
the same way. Lips bow up and down

veiled or not.
I am a cheetah.
Are you one too?

I will be a leopard
tomorrow. How about you?
They call us spotted

hyenas. You and I
know better—the laughter
the hand conceals.