Poetry

I’m Too Old (You Must Change Your Life)

I walk here where Hemingway walked when he was young.

Stony shoreline in Northern Michigan gray blue sea gulls

dotting the horizon, one solitary soul

perched upon a boulder several yards out in the water, gazing at me.

I search for Petoskey stones here, a Northern Michigan treasure.

Fossil formed stone, Hexagonaria percarinata

hexagonal, thoroughly shell-shaped

glacial gift deposited in this place so long ago for us to find.

I have to look up Petoskey because I can’t parse it out on my own.

Words bear the shape of a long past, and I’m a philologist,

lover of words, who needs to know.

I learn it is native to this place, named for the Ottawa Chief, Pet-O-Sega.

I read now how Pet-O-Sega was born to a French fur trader and daughter of an Odawa chief.

Foreign and native, his name shall be Biidassige,

“Light that is Coming,” and he shall be an important person.

So the legend goes, and I like it.

I learn that Light that is Coming walked in this place when he was young.

Stony shoreline near Good Hart, in Northern Michigan,

plentiful red deer, planted apple trees with his new bride,

fruitful gift, a nourishing care for those who come after.

Yet, here I sit, perched upon a rock several yards out from the shoreline, looking at this gull.

A pang of sorrow burrows deep within me; I am too old to write anything meaningful.

Why can’t I be like the gull on the rock, content, observant?

Why can’t I be like the waves, the same motions moment after moment, day after day,

year after year, lapping up the shore and the sand. Lake bound glossolalia.

I glimpse Biidassige, “Light that is Coming,” and he is an important person.

Light is here. It shines into the gray blue of my heart, and I hear, in this moment,

the voiceless lilt of Rilke’s headless torso:

I must change my life.

I am seen, now, by that splintered light pushing through the gray blue tapestry—

light piercing with precise clarity.

Your namesake never saw this age. You’re no Hemingway. And Biidassige welcomes you.

Be in the moment. Be in the light. Be in the sand and the shore.

But most of all, enjoy the mournful shriek of that solitary gull and give thanks for good things,

like your daughter (who is just like you) and terrified you just now, sneaking,

grabbing your shoulder and shrieking, just as you wrote beside the shoreline,

deafening waves muting her approach,

which is something you know you would do to her,

which reminds you, here is where you should be.