Sometimes I Miss Michigan

Michigan

Call me back, Sleeping Bear.
I’m wander weary.
The West has not enough border,
the water there is sucked from bones,
is commodity, oddity, I am not well
without you.

Menomenee, Taquemenon
I will dance again with you
heavy as leaves, whitetail heady.
There is still time for us
Escanaba, you waited through glacier,
wait for me.

Kalkaska, Idlewild, Battle Creek, and Pearl.
The blueberries of Bangor,
loose and rolling underneath my benchseat.
Clementine’s at South Haven.
Push off the pier,
wave to the lighthouse and sail up.
Lake Michigan, lung shaped sea,
blow us on our way
to Saginaw, Muskegon,
even all the way to Drummond.

Replace Spring with Robin!
Let me float down the Two Hearted River
one more solstice.
Find in me, Kalamazoo.
Find me in Charlevoix,
blood faced with strawberry guts.
I deny the open silences of the West.
Give me the quibbles of gulls,
Northern Pike spinning reels,
the lullabies of buoys,
clang...ding...clang...ding...

Frankenmuth’s all-year Christmas.
Gobles, Bravo, Drenthe.
The Pictured Rocks, Kincheloe.
Sault Ste. Marie,
hug me in your locks.
Petoskey, keep your stones,
don’t wash away my blood.
Aurora Borealis, you showed me God
from my tent flap, camped deep in Paradise.

If I left tonight I could be in Ypsilanti,
snug settled in an Amish chair,
with a Pasty, a Vernors, an Elephant Ear.
I could be on Lake of the Clouds,
asleep on the drift of a pontoon.
I will say magic words to bring me:
Onaway, Onaway, Michilimackinac,
Paw Paw, Onekama, Manistee, Manistee.

When I die bury me in Iron Mountain,
bury me in apples and oak leaves,
leave my body in the Lake of the Dead
and I will swim down to the Edmund Fitzgerald.
Or if I never die,
I will tend your hundred lighthouses,
I will paint your autumns.

Keep faith, Michigan.
We burned Detroit,
deserted Flint,
poisoned Erie.
We are as slow as your seasons,
but your sons and daughters
are as deep as thee.

Freeze the waves.
I will walk back to you.