We are sitting at the edge of Michigan’s own slice of the Caribbean—Torch Lake. The water is teal, sometimes turquoise. A handful of children are making little crayfish corrals of sand, circled and fortified by rocks, catching the creatures first with a net and pail. As for us, we’re fortified with turkey sandwiches and bottles of […]
Commit Poetry: The Lake Isle of Innisfree by W.B. Yeats
Wow. It’s been so long since I’ve posted here, I was automatically logged out and had to go dig up my password. I’ve been seriously tied up with other stuff and have let the blog languish–but I see my Instagram stories are still posting down there on the right, so there’s that. Anyway, a […]
Dared: To Paint a Wall Chartreuse
Chartreuse. The color of your creativity. That phrase pinged around my head this morning. I wrote it on an index card, attributed it to L.L. Barkat, and pinned it to my bulletin board. But then I wondered, “Did she really say that—like that?” Laura Barkat has unofficially mentored me for several years. Last […]
Commit Poetry: Committing Romeo (and other stuff)
Here we go again. I swear—I can’t seem to resist a good dare, especially during National Poetry Month and Tweetspeak’s “Year of Shakespeare.” This time, it’s to memorize three sections of Romeo and Juliet. Why these particular three sections? Why not ones I’m already familiar with like . . . Like what? Follow me to Tweetspeak […]
Dared: A 30-Mile Bike Ride and a Request
I’ve gone and dared myself again. Back in December my cardiologist told me I needed to lose some weight. Sigh… I know that, but he’s the first doctor who ever called me out. In the past I’ve heard things like, “No worries. We all gain a little as we get older.” I’m not sure […]
Commit Poetry: Ozymandias, Breaking Bad, and a Duck
I read a Facebook post on January 11 of this year announcing that it was the 200th anniversary of the day The Examiner published Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poem, “Ozymandias.” Ozzy who? I had to look up the pronunciation. Several folks say Ah-zee-mahn-dee-us. Others say Ah-zee-man-dee-us. But some say to fit the meter of the sonnet, the name […]
Dared: Hobnobbing With Alligators – and other Adventures
. . . Hosanna to the alligators in the highest: Glory be to their Maker. —Diana Woodcock, “In the Company of Alligators” We have lived here now for a whole year. Our neighborhood—carved from the Everglades—has zero lot lines and circle-around ponds (also known as lakes) while Surinam cherry hedges provide a bit of […]
A Most Shocking #OneWord for 2018
The man, wearing a burgundy Florida State University t-shirt emblazoned with the words, “Lethal Simplicity,” nodded as we approached each other on a recent walk around the neighborhood. “And how are we today?” he asked. “Simply fine,” I responded and laughed as his golden retriever pulled him on past. I thought of Dorothy in […]
Commit Poetry: Edgar Guest – and My Uncle Edgar
For Edgar Gilmore with congratulations and the best wishes always of another Edgar. Sincerely, Edgar A. Guest June 17, 1939 That’s the inscription inside Edgar A. Guest says: It Can Be Done, a book I found when we were packing up to move. I called my dad the other day. “Who was Edgar Gilmore?” He didn’t know. […]
The Metz Fire of 1908–and Maybe a Connection
My grandmother once rode a train through the middle of a forest fire. I heard the story second-hand from my dad. The family settled in Alpena, he told me, and never returned home to Tower, Michigan. Grandma was four years old. She was born in 1904. Tower is about 15 miles west of […]
