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”
