Notes from Milwaukee

I have traced the line of our difference, acute angle growing ever more distant from inception when I was exactly half you. But lately, shouldering my bag and off to work, small cog in lumbering wheel, I guess similarity. In stretches of conscientious, contemplative soul into proscribed time constraints, I sense again the shared hinge, a way we still meet long after you are gone. On the path back I find within myself expressions of your bright interest: how does it, she, they work--processes and people? For both of us there is no such thing as not to care.

Clod dug up at trail's edge-- mud-colored, clawed and pitted, gator-tailed-- sinks small head and little eye in many folded neck, viper sharp and and able to wait forever.

Inexplicably, two pairs of Canada geese choose to nest on the Pleasant Street bridge. Topping short ornamental towers, gargoyle like, they imprecate passersby, lift slender tongues like stamens of black lilies, like blades concealed in the wrong end of an assassin's cane. I brave road rather than sidewalk, cars over proximity to each hard-eyed goose. From depths of smogged water, a great fish rises, long as my arm. At leisure, he samples air near the surface, lingers almost in reach. Fins ripple, large as my palm, furl like fabric in a gentle breeze. He basks in his world's liquid wind. We see walls, the expert said, they see canyons. We see an industrialized river, they see home. Every morning on my way to work, barn swallows snip air, sheer clean curves and precise angles, work clean as a bright pair of scissors in and out and under the bridge. Their bodies are effortless, an ebullience, iridescent and orange.

This tower was built to house a huge water pipe. I marvel at the beauty of this structure, which could seem entirely unnecessary but enriches passersby today as it has for over a hundred years. Changes of light on Lake Michigan Glimpses Eye of the Octopus Behemoth Warm and celebratory interlude Signs Marsupial Bridge City tulips and the cold spring

"Hear that?" At the bottom of Sheepwash Hill, Mom lifts her cell phone. "The peepers. Can't you hear them?" For seven generations we shared these songs in timber land near Crooked Creek. I press hot plastic between palm and ear. Through speaker's rasp, I strain to discern the singing snore, ascending criiick , throbbing purr a'thruming . . . so distant, and maybe only static. Little wonder our newborns crave maternal heartbeats against their apricot ears-- being selved so suddenly outside of most beloved sound. For the reader-- What sounds have shaped your experiences? Do you still hear those sounds in your everyday life, or have you--or they--moved? How does proximity to beloved places and/or people affect you? How have you navigated times of changing connections? I'd love to hear your thoughts if you want to share them in the comments. If you have work of your own that connects to these ideas, feel free to post a link. Poem...

I sweep pale honey boards that sag in places, that don't lie flush--and feel reverberations of peculiar, buoyant interest. I have made this before: a living room under a shaggy juniper roof, a tiny hog house turned hide-out, a room in a barn full of dreams.

Gray skirts of afternoon trail wind chimes, curled leaves, and the rhythmic wooden thump of cars above the pedestrian walkway. Beneath the bridge--strange world of sand, tire swings, and signage placing the risk entirely on those at play. Coffee shop festooned with colored lights-- men at the bar discuss anime and Lord of the Rings. A man with tattoos on his forehead and soft black eyes offers to buy me a drink. Lured by a glimpse of lake, I get lost and unlost and come again to a place almost too new to be home.