DUNELAND ALL SEASONS

Sand, everywhere: the porch, the stairs, the sheets. Cracks in the blacktop, spotted knapweed, pushing. Incredulous, you found crab shells littering the beach that fall. Woodsmoke in the air. Clandestine midnight beach fires. Morning after, the smoldering logs. Shelf ice breaking up, the low boom. Backroads without streetlights, the long way. The summer sun zoetroping through Black Oaks on RT 12 as it set. The Northern Lights, sometimes. Bars tucked into neighborhoods. The blizzard and the group leaving together that night, looking up into the snow, adjusting scarfs, dumb as cows in the quiet falling around them. Lake effect squall. Mornings, steam off the water’s surface, soon a thaw. After warm rain, the moonlight flings down and slashes the water’s cheek, a warning and a welcome. Then a loon, crying as it floats through the scar. Trains, all hours. Sometimes, faces in glowing windows. Oftentimes, coyotes in the side-yard, cornering prey. That evening she toyed with the frayed edge of a borrowed beach towel, leaned in and asked: “Have you heard them at night? The rabbits screaming?” Fireflies, silently calling out for love unending. Raspberries right off the bush, stained palms. Swimming before noon, the lake the color of marble at the bottom of a fountain. Pulling yourself out of the sea onto a small boat’s deck, first cold then light then heavy. Warm wood in hot sun. Through porch screens, the nighttime local radio blues show drifts into the garden. Somewhere, over the water, mill smoke mixes with summer evening haze. Somewhere, beyond the nightfall, a baseball game is starting up. Somewhere, just past the edge of everything, your other life is playing out. From here, it seems pale and rheumy. Deertails flash on the hill, a mother and three young, looking for peace. Prickly Pear Cactus and Eastern Massasauga rattlesnakes coiled in the sunny folds where two dunes meet. The skyline an alien land shimmering out over the water. 

Wildflowers with names that sound like codewords, sugared with sand.

All summer, fireworks calling through the humidity.

We are not the first ones here. 

For thousands of years, standing sunburned, 

watching the late sun slide over 

the lake's blue water.