A Trip to Wolverine

The first time I heard the place name "Wolverine"

(it's a town in Northern Michigan)

it sounded wonderfully exotic and strange to me.

The fellow who was building us a house 

near the woods outside of Alanson,

said he was going on the weekend to help 

someone with a cabin in Wolverine.

I got a chance to go there when my daughter 

invited me to a Goat Packing Seminar

in--wait for it!-- Wolverine!

I only went there the one time, and afterwards, 

I drove around the town and took some pictures

in the bright summer light.

I later used these pictures to test various ways

of modifying photographs, I still use them

that way, once in a while.

This was done in the iPhone app "Waterlogue."

Now I need to go back next summer!

To Wolverine!

Click this link for other posts with these images of my day at the Goat Packing Seminar.

Country Roads

A pale morning in June 4 AM

the country roads still graying and moist

tunnelling endlessly through pines

a car had passed by on the dusty road

where an ant was out with his pine needle working

He was wandering around in the huge F of Firestone

that had been pressed into the sandy earth

for a hundred and twenty kilometers.

Fir needles are heavy.

Time after time he slipped back with his badly

       balanced 

       load

and worked it up again

and skidded back again

Traveling over the great and luminous Sahara

       lit by clouds.

Rolf Jacobsen; 

translated from the Norwegian by Robert Bly

Twenty Poems, Seventies Press, 1977, page 13.

This is another of the poets I recently found by reading Morton Marcus' memoir lately. He has quite a long section on Robert Bly and his translations.