It's that time of year...

Every summer, it seems, I feel compelled to write a lament poem for the sad reality that I do not live within strolling distance from Lake Superior. 

Through the Wardrobe

I don't live here.
Here I'm just a tourist.

I live somewhere else,
somewhere the morning emerges out of mist,
the air washed clean by crystal waves.
I live there,
crossing the blade edge between this world
and one yet discovered.
I walk in and out of time.
In my little house among the trees
life moves forward
green and warm like a cup of coffee.
But across the way, the hours dissolve into minutes
into seconds and milliseconds
mixed in with pebbles on the shoreline.
Sitting there I can almost taste eternity,
see the light just beyond the clouds,
feel its warmth, even as the chill wind stirs the waters.

God's Spirit moves over Lake Superior. 

Things adults wonder about

If you've ever found a balloon with a message tied to it in your front yard, it might've been from my siblings and me. 

What happened to all those balloons we set free?

Balloons were a thing of childhood.
A treat from the dentist,
restitution for an hour of torment.
A stretchy-soft trophy,
tied with a ribbon on its rubbery stub tail
that squeaked when you caught it
between your freshly cleaned teeth.
It made you forget the taste of fluoride,
made your wrist feel floaty and free

It was tradition to let them go
before they turned to ethereal raisins, tied to our bedposts,
drooping sadly in the horizontal light of the morning

We'd scavenge a slip of paper
and etch a few words--
just a few, lest they add too much weight.
We'd roll them tightly so they couldn't escape
on the way to their accidental recipients.

Standing in the driveway we'd send the balloon messengers off,
watching them take to the clouds like buoys
and with them our imaginations.

Spring Wishes

In the spring, there are few places I’d rather be than at Nebraska Wesleyan University. This is the first year since 2016 that I haven’t spent the spring there, and it’s hitting pretty hard. I’m missing my favorite trees, and the purposefulness of studying.

Also, today is the anniversary of my husband’s and my engagement, so maybe I’m just feeling extra wistful.

---

Three Days

You loved it there–

being forced to wake up

before the clouds had a chance to rise

off of the grass,

and walk to class, clutching things

you hoped you knew.

The trees in spring

spoke in half-thoughts and secrets;

they rustled in expectation:

You will make great discoveries.

You will find the truth

strained through tired eyes.

Possibilities reached up tendrils from the dewy earth,

drifted, gossamer-silent, in fragrant dunes,

drawing you beyond windows,

leaving behind unfinished stories.

Perhaps you are a ghost now, lost among dusty volumes,

sighing in the forgotten corners of rooms

that once rang with your singing.

You were alive there.

You were fervent, you were a fountain.

Now, frozen in winter like Debussy’s naiades.

Will you

sing again?

Moving on (again)

In a little over a month, my husband and I are moving. We bought a house (!) with two staircases, and a yard, and a porch, and a clawfoot tub (!!).

Yes, I’m really excited about the tub. As soon as I saw it, I knew this house was perfect for us–which may be a slight exaggeration, but in all reality it probably comprises at least 60% percent of the reason I’m so excited to move in.

Once we got inside, it took about ten minutes for us to decide we wanted to buy the house, with its original wood floors and french doors and attic suite bedroom. To some that probably seems a bit fast, especially since it was only the third house we’d seen in our search. But we’d been praying about finding a home for months–and if I know anything about prayer, it’s that it builds confidence. We were confident God had led us to this house.

And, as Zac and I have been saying for the last couple months of looking, almost anything would be a step up from our current situation.

For the past year we’ve been living in a tiny studio apartment. Tiny isn’t the bad part–in fact I think it’s been pretty cozy (although working from home here has started to feel a little like being trapped belowdecks in a fairly spacious pirate ship cabin).

There are no windows, just a sliding glass door through which the sunlight occasionally finds its way.

The kitchen has about two feet of counter space. The one time I’ve baked a non-batter bread in this apartment, I had to knead it on my kitchen table. There are no drawers in which to put silverware, like a sane person–instead, we’ve spend a year snatching our utensils out of a small and overworked caddie that I bought at Walmart four years ago. The sink is crammed between the counter and the wall, with barely space enough for one person and their elbows.

And, two of four burners on our ancient stove absolutely refuse to produce any heat.

My frustrations with the kitchen have been manageable, but it’s time to spread out. I want room to dance in my kitchen, because dancing is sometimes the only thing that makes the tedious task of baking bearable.

And I want burners that work!

I want my own walls to put nails in, and finally hang up the art that’s been collecting dust in my very accommodating mother’s office closet. I want a toilet seat lid that’s made of ceramic, not flimsy plastic. I want three–no, four–storage closets,and space for an extra bookshelf (or six). I want to be able to walk into my bathroom without worrying about stepping on cat litter.

More than anything, though, I am so ready to be free of this apartment and the strange, ever-changing smells it greets us with every day. Soon we will leave all the accumulated fumes of thirty neighbors behind, and simply live among stenches we have created ourselves–or can at least identify.

I will not miss this apartment, though I am grateful for the time I’ve shared here with people I love. This tiny, half-functioning kitchen is where I learned to cook brashly and without regard for consequences. This bathroom is where I watched my kitten grow up, by measuring her against the size of the sink. This table is where we’ve shared dinner and board games with lovely friends. This is the place where I packed a suitcase for our honeymoon. This is the home where our marriage began.

Thinking about moving on from this apartment reminds me of all the times I’ve moved on in the past five years. Some of those places I miss, like the suite-style dorm I shared with three friends my sophomore year. That suite had the best windows of any place I’ve lived, besides my parents’ house.

Other places I was happy to leave. I even wrote a joyful good-riddance ode to my freshman dorm, which happened to be in the basement (worst windows of all), for this very blog. It felt so good to leave and never want to come back to that bug-filled place. Like a much-needed haircut.

Neither I nor my husband have stayed in the same place for more than nine months during the last several years. But now we’re looking forward to being in a new place–one we can fit more than five people into, where we can put down some tentative roots, and hope to stay awhile, rather than looking for the next waystation.

Will our new home be quiet, devoid of humming machinery and strange thumping sounds, the source of which we’ve never been able to deduce? I may actually miss the air conditioner here and its lively buzz that comes to interrupt my thoughts. But then again, maybe not.

Our new home will not be perfect, but it will be ours, and that’s what makes this change so exciting. New challenges of home-ownership– like having two toilets to clean, and yard work, and wooden siding–await. It’s time to move on.

Something big is happening

There’s been a lot of change around here recently. By around here, I mean in my life. And by recently, I mean, literally, the last few days.

I graduated from college mere days ago. That’s FOUR YEARS, people, and it whizzed by like a relieved mosquito whose friends all just got splatted by a speeding windshield. I moved back home (temporarily). I’m planning my WEDDING. To the love of my life. Who I will not be seeing for more than a fortnight.

Change always makes me think a lot. About thinking. And I’ve been thinking today, you really know you love something if you miss it.

It’s a weird thing, to miss things and places. Experiences. They probably don’t miss you, being inanimate and sometimes untraceable.

But what if they do?

 

Proof that souls live in our bodies

It doesn’t take much

to get attached to something.

A fragrant breeze,

a moment of meditation,

a shared secret, spoken or not.

The sky cradles million and one ways

to fall in love.

And you’d think that in those moments of revelation,

of peace or clarity or exhilaration,

the world would have to be even just slightly changed

alongside you.

 

We’re a part of this world, aren’t we?

Active

and alive.

Our footprints leave tracks in the dust.

Our hands leave traces of us.

The world feels you,

for all the energy it takes.

And when you move on, it fills your empty silhouette with oxygen.

Graveyard poems

Decomposition

What do the dead become

in decomposition?

By definition, they are no longer

“they”

but something different, an expansion–

or is it a reduction?–

of molecules used

to feed the dust.

In feeding life, do the dead become it?

Is one what one nourishes?

Or do they lie, still

dead

only surrounded, permeated

perforated by life?

 

Reconstitution

Poems always find me in the cemetery.

Something in the smell of the earth

and ripeness of trees

contradicts the idea of a stagnant casket.

 

I imagine they speak to me,

voices muffled by silent air,

muttering truths they know now they’ve gone,

Death having pointed them

toward a greater Constant.

 

Try, they say,

to believe everything we didn’t.

This dust can only reanimate

our flesh and its nutrients–

the material stuff of ourselves,

not what lasts beyond. 

 

Their words stir a question

and I see it etched into the trees,

their silent beneficiaries:

If the earth brings bodies back to life,

who’s to say our souls can’t rise from dust

resurrected to light

by similar substance?

My favorite place to exist

You’re never that far from the road in Grand Marais, Minnesota.

You might think this would detract from the meditative scenery of the North Shore, being so close to such a stark indicator of civilization, but in reality so few cars pass by that the road blends in to the trees around it that stand close together, like bristles on an old-fashioned hairbrush. In this setting the road becomes a reminder of the space between you and other towns, towns with no lake air and people who’ve never even heard of this place.

Not that I would boast to have discovered some hidden phenomenon in Grand Marais, as the town itself is anything but undiscovered. It’s pretty much a tourist town, a quaint gathering of shops and locally famous eateries, its one lighthouse stretching out into the cold, clear waters of Lake Superior, tethered to the rest of the world by a thin strip of algae-skirted boulders.

Venture out onto this man-made peninsula, braving the playful lake spray as it threatens to soak your ankles. Stand facing the horizon, where on a good day the shore opposite you is hidden by a bank of low-hanging clouds, and a brisk wind will flap the unzipped corners of your jacket. The air smells like the cold fog on a metal spoon just removed from the freezer. You can almost forget you’re a part of the world, so far out on the water.

My favorite place to exist is a few miles past the town’s nucleus, on a stretch of rock-strewn beach where a driftwood log sits halfway between the shoreline and the road. I close my eyes and I’m there again, the sun filtering through the clouds to gild the surface of the lake. To either side of me the corners of the beach curve inward, grass and evergreens tapering down to thin points, like the flourishing ends of a grandmother’s cursive script.

If I were blind I could be perfectly content right here, cradled by the stolidly paternal waves, almost still in their ancient rhythm, like the breath that flows in and out of your lungs whether or not you acknowledge it. It’s hard to imagine feeling dissatisfied in a place so serene.

On my desk is a small ovular stone. Its black color has a richness to it I can’t really describe, and it’s so smooth, like polished marble without all the pomp. I like to hold it in my hand and imagine I’m there on the beach I took it from, a little chilly in an overgrown sweater, watching the morning mist dissolve into sunlight. It’s like receiving a postcard from an old friend.

Wish I were there.

Returns

This poem is a tribute to lost things and a place my heart calls home.

 

In Fear of Being Caught Unprepared

What happens to the poems we lose

while out on a wind-chilled cruise of Lake Michigan,

when no notebook makes itself available

tucked between novelties on matronly gift-shop shelves,

and we are stuck clinging to the tassels of a thought

that refuses to wait patiently

while we search our pockets for a pen?

Do they fade away in the sun,

or float, ever-so-leisurely, out of orbit,

like an impregnable helium balloon?

Perhaps lost poems simply turn transparent,

hung around us like hats on invisible coat-hooks,

forgotten by so many dinner guests.

 

Unwritten, a poem is like a cairn

built of lake-smooth rocks and left on some stretch of shoreline,

marking one’s journey around an island.

Stacked lovingly,

the cairn stands, a testament to your being

alive and here,

but some morning not too long after,

a storm returns the stones to their home

where they rest, waiting to be made

a part of something new.

The first poem of summer

Summer break is official, and there has been no small amount of rejoicing in heaven as a result.

 

Night Island

The breeze is

your just-washed shirt

and the sharp twinge of bug repellent,

oxygen rich with layered sounds

offered in the half-dark

to a still world.

My breath joins the vapor of light rising

to break against the star-speckled bowl,

soaking into a jeweled horizon.

 

Below,

A castle of monkey bars,

deserted by its youthful daytime defenders,

stands regardless,

pinned down to the tree-lined background,

engulfed by night air

and no light turns it to shadow.

Revisiting

 Over the summer I’ve missed a lot of things about college. The pianos. The independence.

The food (ha, just kidding).

But the thing I think I’ve missed the most was how simple it was just to take a peaceful stroll around campus late in the evening. The stars are so much more visible out here, as opposed to in my fairly large hometown, where you have to drive for twenty minutes to find a dark enough place for stargazing.

This summer I’ve missed the closeness I feel-to myself, to God, to the trees-during those nighttime walks. I’ve missed the stars and the poetry they’ve inspired.

But guess what? Now I’m back.

 

Night Campus

Without the sun it’s the same world.

 

The same trees line the same sidewalks,

branches draping just so

leaves still breathing out the same sigh of oxygen

that occupies the same space,

breaks against the same stark corners

and weathered window frames of the same

dignified edifices.

 

The same, and yet unfamiliar world-

a closer world lit by moonlight

and nocturnal lampposts

with the same sky, only bluer.

Where my heart lives

 I could literally go on for hours about the North Shore and why no human being could conceivably want to live (or die) anywhere else, but to save you time and sanity, I wrote a poem instead.

You’re welcome.

 

Grand Marais

It’s hard to feel like a tourist

in this tourist town.

This quirky jumble of souvenir shops

and theme restaurants

(and one grocery store)

couldn’t be less unfamiliar;

a cool breath of lake air

gives tired buildings life

and I feel

I may as well have lived here forever.

Learning to skim stones

smoothed by countless revolutions of the earth,

wearing my own trails through the woods;

shortcuts to my favorite trees.

Everyone here knows my name,

and whether I take sugar in my coffee,

and how much.

I know their names too,

just as I recall exactly which beach-stranded rocks

are best for seagull

and star gazing.

Just as I know exactly where to look for the sun

as it sinks below ever-rolling waves,

catching one last strand of light

between the branches of distant evergreens.

 

I find my heart on a shore

littered with colored pebbles

as numberless

and named

as the stars in the sky.

Sentinel

 In my front yard, there was a tree. And this tree was, indubitably, a tree. In front of my house it rose, an immense behemoth of organic matter, a towering pillar of awesome, shedding its glory (in leaf form) onto our humble abode. It had exactly the right kind of bark, the kind that’s perfect for peeling off and making play swords with. I loved that tree, the way its roots gnarled and twisted into the dirt, disrupting the smooth flow of grass, the way its leaves formed an outer coating on the ground. I remember how I always made sure to tread carefully when running around it, because it was the kind of tree that would trip you up if you didn’t show it proper respect. This was a tree on which you would want to carve your initials.

Now that I live in a newer neighborhood (“new,” of course, being the euphemism for “treeless and devoid of personality”), I realize just how much I took that tree for granted. For as long as I lived in that house–indeed, since before I even existed–that tree had been there, standing watch over its domain, giving shade to the neighborhood’s inhabitants in the summer, and mischievously dropping clods of snow onto the heads of unsuspecting pedestrians in the winter. The idea that it had ever been, well, less than it was, is unfathomable.

For me, the world started to exist at the moment I was conceived, and no sooner. But the universe and everything in it has been existing, and growing, and expanding since the beginning of time, without regard to my presence. That Locust tree in my front yard was there before I showed up. And it’s stayed there ever since I left.

I wonder if it misses me, too.

 

[I wrote this piece about a year ago, as an assignment for my first ever Creative Writing class. My teacher probably never read it; we never actually turned it in. But I always felt like it deserved some recognition.]

On Travel

 I’ve never been able to sleep in automobiles. No matter how exhausted I am, I can never seem to tune out my surroundings long enough to manage it–and believe me, two weeks on a tour bus with 44 rowdy college choir kids (can you say that five times fast?) can get VERY exhausting. But alas, my wired brain hates me. So during basically the entire trip, as scores of my colleagues slumbered peacefully, I was looking out windows, taking embarrassing pictures of snoring friends, and trying to keep my creative process alive by writing, drawing, anything. Because if you’re gonna be fully awake for roughly fourteen days of bus rides, some good should come out of the torture.

I wrote the following poem as we cruised westward through the (highly interesting) Nebraska plains. Between the mental exhaustion, the bumpy road and the nosy friend I had sitting next to me, it was kind of an ordeal, but here it is. My first poem of 2016.

 

Drifter

Outside this humming capsule

of reclining seats

and recycled air

the world unfurls in our wake,

pavement skimming its way back to the place

we left in such a hurry.

Beyond barnacle-encrusted windows

the land crawls

and folds over itself,

a vista of gray on brown.

A fresh dusting of snow

drifts, caught between

hills that roll like shallow waves.

Though stationary,

the scene grants them a hint,

a glimmer of life

as the sun’s rays hang

refracted, reflected,

suspended in the air like a million tiny flecks of salt spray

and these once-frozen mounds of earth

become wind-stirred eddies

passing through a drifter’s nets.