Governor Nelson State Park
Lake Mendota

"The wind in the patch of pine woods off there – how sibilant." Whitman, "Distant Sounds"












Feb. 12

Wild the running of the swiveling streams through playground snow melt on a sunny February morning.  Puddles arranged at the foot of the iron play swings, the base of the sitting caterpillars, claws gnashing at the half-ice and old wood emerging. Slides slid down into miniature lakes bright as stars by the tipping of the crystal white sun.  Look at the old beach, carved out, placid, belly full of ice ramming into the coming of the flow of Lake Mendota ice plates! Seagulls land at their leisure on the jigsaw icebergs floating just barely below the surface, peck at the surface, then lift off to the next ice dune.  As does behind us the wind tumbling crisply down the rolling hillocks cracking like a whip  the leafless limbs of the oak trees, petering out at our feet.