Untitled

by Prophetess Naomi Tamar

Lake Superior is my
Beautiful Picture
It changes everyday
Just for me
A white sailboat
With a perfect
Tight white sail
Sitting on a sky blue
Background. Ahhh! She
is lovely

Lake Superior speaks
To me. It speaks
A peace and a calmness
To my soul. The
Beauty of its foam
And waves washes the
Cares of this old world
Away

As I sit on the Peaks, I
Listen to the waves
Never forming the same
Pattern. I'm cool and
Refreshed in my mind
Epiphany!
I can hear the Gulls'
Friendly conversations
They are saying
Child of the Creator
Everything will be
All right

Seagulls

by Cal Benson

I love the displaced prairie seagulls
following plows that churn the great plains.
Screaming and squabbling, they drop
on bugs and worms, and rise in spirals
to scream and shit and drop again,
exiles out of the blue, making do
behind displaced Norwegians on tractors.
I love the fog-soaked gulls in Duluth
posed on a posts, impeccably groomed,
sleeked feathers gelled into place
for photogenic grandeur, until
they open their mouths and screech
their petulance around wads of old gum
and swarm off to join the social squall.
I love the wrangle when gulls rumble
over tourists' popcorn and chips,
brazen as junior high females
in the adolescents’ cafeteria,
aligning and reassigning,
spitting, clawing and gasping
about Penelope and Medea.
I love the gulls that park on rocks
and rave on waves, white and gray
bobbing mobs, eternal Peter Pans,
but impulsive, rude, Narcissus blooms
who study their groomed images
reflected in silver waters, then shed
their veneer in ringing rage.

Untitled

by Cal Benson

The fresh water laps Superior’s shores,
water so cold the lake witholds the dead.
Its waves flash memories of life in the sea,
a longing to return to our mother,
go back to the moist, salty envelope
where we mutated into new beings.
"Mother, Mother, let me in, let me in!"
Would a death by drowning be so awful?
If mother closes your mouth and your nose
with her watery hand, would you struggle?
Or would you surrender to your dawning?
Your ashes to ashes, your dust to dust?
Life comes from the sea; death gives back to the sea.
The Buddha breathes in and then he breathes out.

Perfect Spring

by Cal Benson

Under lithographic
bluestone cliffs
that enclose
this Superior theater,
a watercolor fog
smudges us in,
blurring crag lines
with birch and pine,
while waves applaud
their endless delight
at this natural opening.
Fog follows whirling
dervishes of snow
twirling across
the blue ice stage
that broke and plunged
into a forced ballet
of power and line--
choreography that foiled
autumnal projectiles
of red and golden leaves
that twisted and pierced
the wet jazz waves
of a fall quartet.
But now as spring fog lifts
from the lake’s stage set,
a woodpecker drums
a syncopated beat
for a breezy symphony
to echo rythms and chords
off gray cliffs, announcing
another consummate Duluth day.