FRAGMENTS FOR SALE

 

 

Do you need a good, clean, unused fragments to complete a poem or maybe

as a spare part in case you run into unexpected writing trouble?  Our 

inventory has grown and we need to make room for next year's models so 

we're holding a clearance sale. We've got fragments for every budget--from

a single sentence to a full stanzas, some complete with metaphors. No 

reasonable offer refused. Trade-ins considered. Test drive for thirty days 

and if not completely satisfied return for a full refund. Check out these models:

 

***

You keep whispering to me 

but you don't say why.

`

***

I got paid in diamonds and dynamite.

***

Out in the void

secure in his ship 

sails an off-course astronaut

...when will he know?

***

After the last leaves fall

unfed ghosts hang

one or two from a tree

waiting for what the wind brings them.

***

She was not measured on the ordinary scale of gods.

***

I would like to catwalk among the parapets wearing 

a cravat and epaulets 

not because I look good doing this 

but because of how it sounds.

***

The public relations firm I hired keeps sending me memos 

instructing me to "act more like myself."  

I keep trying but make too many mistakes... 

***

Her neighbors unaware 

the girl who walked out her front door

cascaded into happiness.  

 

*** 

Up North

Men seek for seclusion in the wilderness, by the seashore, or in the mountains - a dream you have cherished only too fondly yourself. 

                    --Marcus Aurelius

Everyone has their happy place. Mine is "up north" on Michigan's Leelenau Peninsula where I've gone since I was six to meet up with Aunts, Uncles, cousins, and annual friends. Here's my small collection of books on the area. 

1. Above the North: Aerial Photography of Northern Michigan, Marge Beaver (2006). Beaver captures a four season, bird's eye view of the Peninsula, Sleeping Bear Dunes, Lake Leelenau and the lakes of of Crystal, Roch, Elk, and Glen. Gift.

2. Leelenau: A Portrait of Place in Photographs & Text, Ken Scott & Jerry Dennis (2000). Extraordinary collection of timeless pictures around Leelenau County.  A gift from my sister July 2003 after our largest family reunion up north.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

3. Letters from the Leelenau: Essays of People and Place, Kathleen Stocking (1990). One of my favorite all time authors.  Letters is the first of a trilogy by Kathleen Stocking on a sense of place. She provides an small gems profiling small town life, local artists like Jim Harrison and New Yorkers, and personal reflections including her father Pierce Stocking, a lumberman who helped preserve much of Sleeping Bear Dunes and constructed what is now Pierce Stocking Drive. We may be cousins through my paternal grandmother's people who were also Stockings from the Grand Traverse region.  Cover painting Manitou Dreams by local artist David Grath. Bought new and later met the author at Van's Garage in Leelenau who inscribed my copy.   

 

 

 

 

4.  Lake Country: A Series of Journeys, Kathleen Stocking (1996).  A series of journeys to the islands of Lake Michigan and Lake Huron.  Bought at Leelenau Books.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

5. The Long Arc of the Universe: Travels Beyond the Pale, Kathleen Stocking (2016).  The final series in the trilogy and is less about Up North but the final chapters return to a trip to South Manitou Island.