Shadow of Tall Trees

"I sit down at a table and open a book of poems and move slowly into the shadow of tall trees. They are white pines, I think."
– Louise Jenkins, from "Library"









Spillway Tunnel


The sun is still high late in the day by the benefit of daylight savings.
This was a grateful surprise of a day,
supposed to be slate gray,
all wind and gusty according to the fierce symbols on the weather app.

We walk a trail that follows above a railroad track,
it is all slush and grooved, pocked by winter's old footmarks,
and so we take careful steps around its edges littered by bark
and gravel and there stands below an underground tunnel,
an entry a bit like some old visions of a Scottish highlands home,
made by old limestone.
"It's dry, let's just sit on it, we can dangle our legs over the top"
my youngest daughter says.

There is no one around us.
Not a train to be heard coming for miles.
The city is far behind us now, on the other side of the short bluff.
Down at the lake, water rushes over the spillway in rapid streams,
flowing down the side into the Black River where wind is now stirring
the water to a mixture of what looks like glass jewels set on long strings.

Why not try the tunnel?
Graffiti says that Ellen was here back in 1962,
etched likely by the tip of a hard nail.
Love, peace, and understanding, rough strokes, litter the side walls
of this dank but pristine cellar,
as it gets darker and darker until the other end stands there like a perfectly square frame lens,
full of old white snow, bright as the sun itself.

Nobody for miles,
after school, a father and daughter,
what we've always known
that here it is to live again the natural world.