A Short Collection of Summer

 Traveler

Over the eastern Dakotas
the winds exhale
a cotton ball cloud
and push it along
over wheat and rivers
just in time to notice
while finishing
The Detroit News
and a cup of cold coffee
on a Michigan hillside.


Chain of Causation

The daughters
paddled their vacation kayaks
so far out
the mothers got excited
and made the fathers
chase them in kayaks
It was the daughters plan
Laughing the whole time.


Right Time, Right Place

Drifting on the on a yellow raft
floating on the blue earth
swirling in the white galaxy
was the place to be
that Sunday.


Some Words in the Dark

Evening is a wholesome sunset
then Old Grandad, mosquitoes
and clumps of conversation
The darker it gets
the more the conversation opens up
until we’re just outlines of figures
silenced by lighting and bellow of thunder
on the western sky

Postscript

No wonder the Ojibwa
on this land
had Animikii, a bird
who caused thunder
with the beating of its wings.