Poetry by Northern Minnesotans

AT THE FIRE RING (for lunch)

2009-08-20T10:29:00.000-07:00

by Gordon Prickett

One brat one bun with catsup and mustard

Chips and a Bud Lite

the fire gathers quickly from circles

of peeled birch bark lighted in the west wind

Back ashore from a Secchi Disk read of 9.5 feet

on a windy sunny day

puffy scattered clouds like sheep

wander east

Quickly I have a tasty meal

beside this circle of cement

perched above the lake bank

on a tree-shaded shore

Weekdays in August are quiet here

a young couple sails out from anchorage

in their yellow boat

Distant sounds of chain saw and dozer

will invite a look... after a while

there isn't any place on this earth

where I would rather be

Grandpa Ole said it a century ago

"I like myself here."

Gordon Prickett August 2009

TOO MANY PEOPLE

2009-07-15T07:45:00.000-07:00

by Gordon Prickett

Alone on this early street

A COUGH across the way says no.

Like Hong Kong in 1991, there are people moving

on this Oakland street at every hour

Running, walking, walking dogs, running leashed dogs

or no leash, cycling, motoring, on sidewalk, roadway, driveway

close together.

The houses fill up 50 by 50 foot lots

leaving cars at the curb.

Any garages are scarce space for storage

and spillover living.

Regulations tell you when to move your car,

scoop after your pets, cross the street with... 7, 6, 5, 4 seconds

to get out of the way.

From northwoods Minnesota I came for a few weeks.

Today I fly back and resume life as we know it.

We who portage, paddle, plow, fish, and hunt

grow food, build things, mine ore, cut timber, raise cattle

don't drink so much wine

or insist on so many kinds of coffee.

My country road has more deer than settlers.

No wonder this absence of quiet leads me to see

a future diminished by too many people.

Gordon Prickett January 2008

Noah's New York Bagels in Oakland, California

7:10 a.m., January 7

Daybreak

2009-04-28T07:29:00.000-07:00

by Gordon Prickett

From water's edge I see a bass jump.

Somewhere along the bank a mallard calls.

Fog rises in the shallows.

Across the lake mist turns rose and blue.

Straight out from shore a loon surfaces,

calls like a bugler and dives.

Again on the surface he laughs over and over.

Fish splash near shore as the sun barely rises

above trees to color the far shore green.

Gordon Prickett August 1996

Superior Haiku by Gordon Prickett

2009-04-16T10:32:00.001-07:00

In Mid April I found myself in Duluth at the Lift Bridge Canal with a break between the Annual Mining Symposium and its closing banquet at the posh Kitchigami Club on Superior Street. The sky was clear. The lake the deepest blue. Even with water temperature at freezing, the lake walk was enjoyable. No camera, but I found a pencil.

SUPERIOR HAIKU

lift bridge canal ice
floating melting in the sun
sparkling white mid April

Duluth clear blue sky
natives run walk sit and smile
gulls announce their day

Now to return to Aitkin County, where lake ice is rapidly melting, and nearby loons are watching for their waterways.

MORE RAIN

2009-03-23T11:27:00.000-07:00

Gordon Prickett July 1993

At least in Nordland Township this morning - where we have a partial washout on the gravel road to our place. As I drove around it and viewed some of the culverts that are full and flowing, I recalled another time and place when the waters kept rising.

It was the summer of 1993 in St. Louis. The confluence of the Illinois, the Missouri, and the Mississippi Rivers. My employer was the electric utility, and we had serious difficulty generating and transmitting electric power in that 500-year flood.

MORE RAIN

Rain pelts a sodden earth.

Creeks rise and rush to swollen streams.

Streams spill over banks, rivers rise relentlessly.

Thunder booms while lightning’s eerie glow flashes.

Week after week we bear witness,

joined by president, governor, and mayors.

Those who lived at the edge of water

have fled its awful force.

Builders who made deals in river frontage

leave buyers washed out.

We see earth’s continuing creation

this soggy summer of 1993.

Across the Midwest seams of rock

once were formed with transported soil and sand.

Rain and flood reshaped dry land.

Today battered people pray - to stop the rain

and for strength through the storm.

Gordon Prickett July 1993

Market Crash 2008 by Gordon Prickett

2009-03-17T11:23:00.000-07:00

MARKET CRASH 2008

"Credit default swap" - what's in a name?

Is it a loan or insurance, for stocks or bonds?

Does it signal risk or greed?

Will it be a slam dunk, a piece-of-cake?

The more words needed to explain it,

the murkier, the shakier, the weirder it is.

We are told the creators of credit default swaps put together

"securitized" sub-prime mortgage loans and insurance.

Their bosses understood little about this product,

but signed off anyway and cashed in.

Now, fellow victims, we all know the swindle that was.

We have our own names for this collapse -

bleeping deleted expletives.

A Splash

2009-02-03T05:04:00.000-08:00

by Gordon Prickett
(gordmett@emily.net) of Heartland Poets

Loud splash at water’s edge

where a V appears

A swimming beaver leaves our shore

cutting season for beaver families

With trees falling around the lake

we bring in a trapper

who takes five of these busy beavers

and collects their pelts.

It’s for the good of the lakeshore

that we limit the beaver

There is a season on beaver and bear

hunters harvest the browsing deer

But when the chainsaws and dozers,

cement trucks and nailing guns arrive

we have no season on people up here.

a splash and a roar and the shore is changed.

November 2005

Universal Life

2009-01-30T10:09:00.000-08:00

by Katie Carter of Bemidji

The universe spirals on. . .
feeding on itself, on moons and meteorites, on stars,
sun, and satellites, on vapors and Venus,
people,
Pluto, and
the planets.

Twelve billion feet
connecting with earth,
each cell radiating energy of
passions,
fears,
hopes . . .
Blending, swirling, suffusing
becoming one another.
Every one,
everyone
morphs
into
the
all.

Waves
of wisdom
wafting
with
waves
of why.

breaths and vibrations of humanness
and taking others in:

Voltaic vapors, the bi-products of lives, of babies and boys
and Saturns rings and kangaroos. . .
Mars and grandmas and dads and thieves and horses
waterfalls and moms and siblings and crickets. . .
foes and visionaries and moonlight. . .
Dogs and ducks and giggling school kids and girls gone mad and
geniuses and saints and volcanoes and floods and
legends and

all that has been.

Can you feel me Pluto?
It’s me, a minuscule morsel of life,
I dwell on the planet earth.

Can you feel me Pluto?
I’m sending you a secret signal and
I think I feel your pull.