In Superior National Forest ghost trees
rise like many-limbed skeletons
here 26,797 acres flamed into history.
Smoke-choked and helpless, again
we watched: the trees, our future charred—
becoming ash.
We calendar our days by weather catastrophes—
a tally of droughts, fires, floods, hurricanes.
While the fossil fuel showdown rages,
each looking becomes a small shattering.
Along this rustic road in Lyons Township
sandhills nested, their necks stretched, bending
to pluck the plenty, to feed fist-sized copper chicks.
Here, too, deer stood at dusk among the lily pads.
Now the tiny pond has vanished—
its empty a jigsaw of cracked and dry.
That older, wet world I carry only as memory.
Once on the Kawishiwi River an ancient channel
called us. We paddled deep into its winding marsh
where river otters bobbed and chased
where pitcher plants smiled like fairytale villains.
Is beauty a mouth that devours?
Do we go willingly?
No entrance now to that cosmology of nibi—
our dream ways barred by receding waters.
In this tattered, what should we fear more—
losses yet to come or facing our own reflection?
—
Kimberly Blaeser, past Wisconsin Poet Laureate and founding director of Indigenous Nations Poets, is the author of six poetry collections including Ancient Light. An enrolled member of White Earth Nation, Blaeser is an Anishinaabe activist and environmentalist, MFA faculty member at Institute of American Indian Arts, and Professor Emerita at UW–Milwaukee. Blaeser spends part of each year in a cabin near the BWCA wilderness following poems, photos, and river otters—sometimes all at once.
