Michigan, Collected
by Wendy BooydeGraaff
June is a hopeful month. The days are longest, sun is hot, air not as humid as July or August, sky a lighter blue. Orange roses burst, peonies bloom layers upon layers, green races to fill spaces. Summer, not only begun: underway. All winter long, and most of spring, I long for summer morning breakfasts, hot trail bike rides, wild black raspberries, farm rows blooming blueberry polka dots, outdoor music nights. I’m sitting here now wrapped in a blanket on an all-weather chair, a chipmunk running under me, a robin watching me one-eyed with its head tilted, trying to grab every day, already anticipating how it won’t last. I’m thinking about endings, how artificial they are, how nothing really ends, not truly. What about life, you say? And I suppose there will be an end to me, but only you will see me wrapped in my linen shroud and placed among the roots of tall scenting trees. Mushrooms will sprout above me, I’ll slowly fade into soil. Summer will end, but it will cycle back. The sun, the roses, the blue sky—all of it will continue on above me.
Wendy BooydeGraaff’s poems have been included in Cutleaf, Barzakh, Sierra Nevada Review, Litmosphere, and anthologized in Midwest Futures: Poems & Micro-Stories from Tomorrow’s Heartland (Middle West Press), Under Her Eye (Blackspot Books), and Not Very Quiet (Recent Works Press). Born and raised in Ontario, Canada, she now lives in Michigan, United States.