Vacationland

My honey and I are about to head out on our last road trip of the season! Thinking of how much fun we've had throughout this warm season and how many poems have been inspired. I'm keeping them all in a collection on my computer currently titled 'Vacationland.' Lots of memories, lots of Michigan, lots of love. 

Exert from Vacationland

The farther north you drive

The more you are surrounded by open space

There are no chain restaurants

Strip (mall) culture

You can keep driving like this

Along that sculpted highway

Until you journey all the way to North Port

Past the light house on the right

and find yourself looking out over the edge

Staring out onto miles and miles of water

Or drive out to Empire and hike the mile and a half trail

Up to the bluff

Where Glen Lake deposits into the ocean

Watch the blues and greens milk together like honey

Body

(An exert currently featured in The Last Place on Earth, in the Vacationland arsenal)

On our bikes we entered into a fugue state

That felt like childhood

That did not know boundaries or fear

At the mercy of our guide 

From the water to the Wailing Wall

Detroit’s Berlin Wall

Families playing golf on one side

and starving on the other

Half a mile of racism

Left over from a time bathed in fire

Immortalized by the work of dozens of artists

White birds, People running to board busses

A trail full of bubbles gliding across primary houses

When they could no longer keep themselves separated

The white birds fled the city

In search of a different 

“American Dream”

One with a little less chocolate

A little less red hot

A little less fire

I crushed that “American Dream” deferred between my teeth

Feel it explode like a ripe grape

Spit out colors from between my eyelids

A prayer for a new neighborhood

And wonder if the water missed making reflections

If it envies the mirror

That mimics so effortlessly

The water’s not blue anymore

Its carries with it the burden of a history of fire

Tearing down the old in hopes that one day

Something new will rise from the ashes

That everyone has a chance to call home

It took me a long time to realize we had stopped running

It was something about the vibrations

Or lack there of

Something about the way E became very calm

She held me less

My mental images began to slow

E simply sat

And waited for all her demons to come running

“As long as you keep moving, your safe

But the minute you stop

Everything you’re running from consumes you

There’s no other way”