Sheboygan We made a spot in the center of the city: here, it will be green. We trained our flowers to grow up trellises, to mark out our paths. Behind us, Lake Michigan creeps closer and closer. Don’t turn around, don’t look. You know what happens in the stories to the child who leaves the path. You’ve seen them at night, in your dreams, dancing wide-eyed at the bottom of the lake.
My notes: I love the Great Lakes immensely. Maybe this is partially from growing up in the middle of nowhere in Northern Michigan, but nature always has both sides to me – it’s awe-inspiring, which means it’s awesome and awful. But I think the key to how I see it is that these aren’t “two sides to the same coin” or something like that – that’s too separate. The danger of it is part of what makes it beautiful. The fact that it’s beautiful is part of what makes it dangerous. But you know, at this point I’m just rambling philosophically about things I’d rather try to express in poetry.
