Big Lake Poems: Pink Pickable Ladyslippers

Pink Pickable Ladyslippers
This one is from The Big Lake Poems anthology. The Lake Michigan dunes flora decorated my growing up and has inspired these poems. This one is about lady slippers, childhood and big life choices.

i wasn't to pick the lady slippers

that much was clear

but they are so pickable and plus i WANT to

i whined to grampa

as we walked to Lake Michigan

through the woods of the backdune

where their precious lady slipper

grew just to taunt me

let them grow he said

if you pick them, no one else can enjoy them

i didn't see that as my problem

there was no one around to see them anyway

Besides he said they are protected

its illegal to pick the lady slipper.

illegal, humph i scuffed my feet and scoffed

(not really seeing that as my problem either)

pick up your feet, you'll ruin your shoes

he smiled over his shoulder 

to where I lagging and still slightly scuffing 

Also if you pick the lady slippers, they can't grow.

he had me there

other people not seeing flowers

did not in the least bother 

a selfish four year old girl

going to jail for picking a flower

did worry me a bit

not about breaking laws

only whether i could bring my toys

but to be responsible for the murder of flower?

now that was troubling

if i should pick her

she would wither and die

her pretty pink blossoms shaped like fairy pointe shoes?

little flowers that never hurt anyone 

whose sole job was to make the forest nice

i decided to leave the lady slipper to her work and announced this to grampa

grampa in his plaid flannel coat

took his less-selfish little girl's hand

in his big printers ink stained one

and we walked home, we two, content in our company

The Grama-Grampa House Smell: Fresh-wind Lake-green Pine-time

Fresh-Wind Lake-Green Pine-Time
More from the Big Lake Poems anthology. I wish that I could make you smell the way my grandparents' house near Lake Michigan smelled. Or that I could smell it again. Maybe this poem will help.

The grama-grampa house

was not on Lake Michigan

but you could smell the big lake 

in their house

as the crow flies grampa and I could walk

to the big lake and we did

at least once a week every week

of my life since birth give or take

except when we moved to Alaska

or during my years in college

until I moved away

but i came back and walked with him

he took my kids for walks to the beach

our oldest three that is

he wasn't getting around too well

when the youngest came

the lake inhabited the grama-grampa house 

in scents of sand and wind

wood and rain

and an indefinable fragrance signature of Lake Michigan alone

I smelt it first and best

coming upstairs third step from the top

of the cool yellow speckle- tile basement

where I was sent to fetch canned cherries

from the cedar wood pantry

that grampa built for grandma

for a dessert called

Cherries in the Snow.

we saved some things

from the grama grampa house

in a box sealed tight

to preserve the wind-fresh lake-green pine-time smell

for awhile if you sniffed soul-deep

there was a whiff of it

wind-fresh lake-green pine time

but now its all gone

i can evoke scent-memory a little

with feel-think smell- remembering

i can conjure up the grama-grampa house

but only a little and its fading fast

Big Lake Poems: Trillium and Pine

I'm creating a volume of poetry that I call 'The Big Lake Anthology' about my life and memories growing up near Lake Michigan, or The Big Lake as we called it. This one 'Trillium and Pine' is centered around a white tri-petaled flower, also known as grandiflorum, native to Michigan's old-growth forests and protected by the DNR. This early spring blossom is welcomed every year with a festival in my home town. Some trillium are red and so my poem reflects those species in metaphor. It also celebrates the short lives of my two infant daughters, deceased at birth, Mary Therese and Isobella Raine Sachteleben.

warm wine glow
tranquility flow
trillium and pine
rhythm and rhyme

good with the bad
happy I've had
time upon thyme
trillium white wine

from flower bower 

then turns the hour

up a steep hill
some remain still

some things to grow
some to let go

rest in the vale
tell of the tale

sad winter time

crusted in tear-salt rime

gall bitter vine

blood red wine

mem'ry is song
singing along
verse and refrain
of lyric-ripe pain

sing to the dark
cling to the mark
libate the night

drink to the light

feel the days go
rain and then snow
fresh summer wine
rosemary and time

the trillium still bloom
in deep new-spring gloom
white as a maid
born in the shade

pine stands true
ever green-blue
withstanding the pain
shining the in the rain

warm autumn wine
golden twilight, thine
now is the time
for reason and rhyme
trillium and pine.

Big Lake Poems: Lily- Laced Walks

Lily-of-the-Valley grew along Grandpa's walk

Tiny white bell-blossoms with breath of heaven scent.

He pruned the yard but let the lilies engulf the path.

Sometimes you had to skirt them and walk on the grass.

Grandma had Lily-of the Valley in her wedding bouquet.

It cost twelve dollars for a dozen in 1935.

It was the Great Depression and that was a fortune

but she wanted them so he got them.

I have an old photo of her at the altar

It's a black and white, painted on the back for color.

they did things like that back then

She's holding the lovely lilies and she is lovelier 

I guess lily-of-the valley are weeds

I didn't know that. He told me so, my husband

They grew in the motor-oil soil of the alley behind his growing up house.

Some even snuck under the chain link fence and his mother would root them out.

 

I grew up with stories of

dollar a piece lilies in bridal bouquets.

I thought everyone felt that way about them. 

these wee white wedding bells

 There are ancient lily-of the-valley

 lining the crumbling walks of our now house

 Planted when the city was just a stop

 on the interurban to Grand Rapids.

Someone talked of digging them up when we moved in

"you won't want them, we feel sure"

I protested, let them grow and he agreed

One woman's weed is another's wedding bower

It's 20 years now.

Grandpa's lily laced walks 

have new people living within them

I dream I'm back there every night

The lily bride and her slender-pale groom

have been in their graves for nearly the same

their lives long and full

but no less painful the passing for the length of sojourn

My groom gathers our lilies in spring

and puts them in a vase 

that my grandmother gave me

how we miss those silly romantics who wasted two weeks pay on weeds

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