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dunesMichigannaturepoetry

To Love Michigan in Summer

Sumac and scrubby grass, dense-leaved oaks and maples, jumbles of every possible green. Blue spruce, Douglas fir, white pines, red pines, the astonishing symmetry of jack pine trunks in a sudden stand. Dead trees like skeletons rising from swamps. Everything stubby and scruffy and sassafrassy.
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July 1, 2017
naturespirituality

Nothing is Wasted

I’d like to believe that when someone dies young, say from cancer at age 42, leaving a young family behind, I’d like to believe that “nothing is wasted.” That’s the sort of thing we say to each other: “Even though we don’t understand, his life…
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November 14, 2015
naturepoetry

Japanese Autumn

Lines Composed in an Autumn Reverie, on Visiting the Japanese Garden one Friday Afternoon, October 2015. Chrysanthemums Huddled palms direct their longing west with every gust, great frond-arms and arrow-leaves jostling, clenching, splaying. Bright chrysanthemums ensconce them, basking in slanted light, steady and splendid.
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October 2, 2015
Michigannaturespirituality

At the Mineralogical Museum

“I will remove from them their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh.” — Ezekiel 11:19 Hardness has advantages. I think of this today here in Michigan, where the temperatures have been so cold that snow absolutely crackles when car tires push…
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February 20, 2015
memoirMichigannature

Snow Day

Six-thirty a.m. Dark. No sound save the wind’s distant crescendos and calms. No traffic sounds. Slip out of bed to check the internet for closings: could it be? Oh, snow day! A peek outside: streetlamp light illuminates the snow, still blowing horizontally, at least eight…
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January 9, 2015
naturesillytheology

Matthew 2.0

Therefore everyone who hears these words and puts them into practice is like the wise woman who followed the instructions on the internet when she built her retaining wall.
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May 19, 2012