Leelanau Calling
Just as bees squeeze like watermelon seeds
Spit across apricot fields
My wife and I on Friday
Join the lines of highways up north
Pulled by hilltops to the Leelanau blue sky
Where lakes stir in the wind at the citrus rims
Of wine valleys below
And cherry orchards blossom in row after row
Like sheets of cupcakes spiraled with frosting.
Tonight we will sit tight around our lakeside fire
As petals closed upon this blaze of flower
With a Loon trilling her flute of bones
To the stars salted across the night
And voices bump from shore to shore
Murmurs softened beyond repair
The cabins flickering to a second life
In a fuse of fire lit around our lake
A tradition. We stop the car a ways away
From my mom and dad’s cabin
And let out our kids on the shoulder of road
To run like deer the final half mile.
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