Lake Michigan
Lake Michigan
Saugatuck MI 9/1997
My Lady
She is always there
With so many faces and dispositions
She is always there,
Waiting for me to join her worshiping her creator
in a benign natural way.
She awaits apart from the bustle of occupation
She shines and darkens with or without me.
Responding to her creator and stewards as pets
Yet she appears unmoved and unchangeable
Laying flat and blue forever.
The Great Sea
The beauty is not in the bikinis
Natural beauty itself engenders and collects.
The grandesment, the magnitude, of water and sky, is the stamp of her shores.
No inland lake with birch and fir and cottages will compare to this great sea
that encompasses my state
and offers such grace.
Masculine occupation
heavy machinery
carports and billcaps
braving the cold
that makes the face ruddy
that tears the mind of all but the present
enduring the weather
to enjoy the satisfaction of a fish caught or a job done
making preparation for the feminine summer on the beach.
Pier Fishing
They line up with coveralls and cold weather gear,
although the weather warms inland.
Here is always cooler.
Here the hozon line sweeps everywhere.
Blue on blue, grey fading in to grey.
The sun warms the dark clothes as we wait.
Some chat with buddies or acquaintances
standing, or sitting on buckets.
You can tell the pros, the old timers
with carts and all the right gear and bait.
Perch are being taken on minnows,
No salmon now at this spring morning
Each day is different,
Morning is best fishing
But evenings offer sunsets
The wind picks up
Underdressed and no minnows
I go to shelter of the car, arrange the trunk
Making a mental list of what is needed next time.
Morning Beach:
Sunday Blue
Unseen Horizon
Quiet Flatness
Still lapping, lapping,
quiet lapping
Motors roar past
focus and bounce
But still she lays gently on the sand.
Children now.
frolic in the chill
Lovers pet
and flaunt their affections
But up on the sand above the rolling grasses
lays a spirit at rest in the dune.
Michigami
Cool emanates from her.
Many come to bask in summer relief.
Fish swim in her belly and men recreate
The utility of color soothes and heals the eye
A soul learns her blues, her greens and her greys.
A tourist delights in the light that burn and flutters.
They dance and kiss and say goodbye.
Her husband knows her moods and her winds.
He knows how to stand and when to hide.
Yet she keeps
treasures and silences
beauty and repose
moving and alive.
The Sky is her only lover
The earth her only home
Living and loving dispassionately lifetime to lifetime.
Men come near to know her secrets
to cross and dive and shoulder
Premium value she exacts for those that would stay.
Off in the distance unbending from this small place
The sand rolls down in the summer
after so long being blown into its place.
Summer’s End
It as so silent
The oaks dropping their corns
were louder than my footfall
Nothing was astir.
The stillness was heavy and wonderful.
As twilight faded to night,
the light sand path hid with the growing fearsome darkness the forest floor.
Boldly stepping into the night, Each step looking for solidity
Assuring that the path continued between the shadows of the trees.
Abandoned now after the declared end of Summer,
here now is heaven and peace.
When they now rush into imperatives,
the gentleness of summer late is crushed
in the grid of determination.
Venus in my right hand and Mars in my left
I worship with exulted arms
Blue within blue within blue
The moon crests in my ear.
Annoying noise overhead
Drones look down and see nothing
Only engines/motors in their wealthly cocoons.
The wisping dust print of grass on the sand
or a Jay calling its mate
or a started fawn prancing over the hill
Sand as soft as cream
under foot and the brushing grasses on the leg
the naking secluded vista
Communing with a very present god
who refuses to relinquish summer.
End of Day
The motors finally fade to silence
Aromas roll down the dune to me
Grey envelops us slowly
The pulse of the wave comes to shore as a prayer.