for Nathan & Nicole, July 25 2009
It’s always windy near Lake Michigan, a courier breeze
brings the smell of a lilac sunrise, red-winged blackbird
leftover seed breakfast. It’s always a little greener
near the lakeshore, and the wind knows it. A grass blade
sashay, fiddle song, meanders across waves, perhaps
a little north. See, this breeze knows its lake well, hums
its resting psalms, sound compass, and only love
can move a dune from concrete to concrete, memory
slabs and stones, pebbles really, smoothed by
the intertwined fingers of fresh water. Above,
the Midwestern sky is the blushing cheek of wave prayer.
Buoys blink in cloud mile time. The edge of the lake
doesn’t mind the careful way the wind scatters itself
along beaches, festival rocks, piers and paths. The always
shift does not interrupt, rather, invites waking breath
to journey toward daffodil light, never leaving a stone
unskipped, a bite of water unloved. If the lake folded itself
over into stripes, a past and a future might meet among
painted moon-water and the perch and pike in awe
of possibility, orange starbursts, white wings, liquid
mercury reflections. This is a kind of language that knows
which way is east, knows how water softens the corners,
washes sand from the eyes, water pools, water calms,
and when it falls from the sky, water sighs a marvelous sigh
in the open mouth of one shouting love. The wind carries
that too. Listen, hear the wave-glimmer, bliss-words, purpose
found in outspread arms. Breathe deeply
this air, this love, make room for this lake, hold its hand,
share pier-dreams that jut, tiptoe on star mirrors, spin, dance,
and tell the wind not to forget the lilacs
Lindsay Daigle received her BA in Creative Writing and Philosophy from
UW-Milwaukee in 2007. She is currently working toward her MFA in Poetry
at the New School University in New York City. Milwaukee always has and
always wiill be her home.
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