i.
We wake with arrowheads—
our hands clamped around dreams,
dreams of hummocky bodies
glacial names tattooed
on each blue-rivered forearm.
What does it mean to hunger
for shards,
a glossary to story us?
ii.
How shall we story our swing state?
Unreliable in polls, in policy.
Fickle Wisconsin. My home. My heart.
My headache. I grow more blue, fretful
over union-breaking, mines, redistricting.
I suggest a time-out or counseling.
We need to reconcile, mend our rifts—
for our children and grandchildren
and grandchildren’s children—our future.
Our future, Wisconsin, should re-member
our past—put back together the stories
and bodies, lands and beliefs broken.
iii.
Imagine with me metamorphic becoming,
each miraculous emergence:
oceans and islands
rising receding rising
in their dance with volcanic force
Our lives, too, servant to the alchemy
to the carving gusts of wind and water,
time—and telling.
iv.
What story, Wisconsin? Will we tell
of Black Hawk or removed tribes,
of Vel Phillips and housing marches?
What story of Menominee and termination,
treaty rights, spearfishing, and treaty beer?
What story of Gaylord Nelson and Earth Day?
Beloved state of red cliffs and blue waters—
Mesconsing. Will we once again speak
the banned words (climate change)?
Our history Janus-faced, we live torn
between better angels and false memes
Overfed inheritors of strife—hungry for civility.
v.
Sometimes the story is simple:
the etched back of Turtle that holds us—
it asks only belief.
Earthdivers one and all—sleek
water bodies surfacing,
emerge to sing on holy ground.
