Lazy Days

August is rushing to an end and September's barreling toward me, but I'm still shirking all responsibilities. Syllabus? GRE? Who cares. Today was diving, dunking, climbing, jumping. Nothing compares to 85 degrees on Lake Superior with my boys (who seem to forget the general rules of "cool" when we're lakeside), even if I can no longer dunk my oldest son.

For Luke, soon---a poem titled "Lake-Dunking as Epiphany."

For now, quiet.

Soon enough I'll begin my last year at NMU, and I'm excited and terrified. I'm ready to leave here, yet I never want to go. Damn the economical disaster of this area. Damn the need to work, to have a PhD to teach. Damn the mystery of not knowing where the next year will take us but knowing that it will most definitely not be here.

I'd rather play in cold water and dance barefoot on the sand and eat ice cream before dinner for the rest of my life. I'd rather read Frank Giampietro's Begin Anywhere in the hammock all day. I recommend you read it, too---not because Frank was one of the cooler cats I met at Sewanee---but because it's survival and living, it's heartbreak and humor. It's these last lazy days and all the days it took to get here.

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PS: Also check out Frank's website, where you can hear several poets reading poems they know by heart.