Praise from William Stafford

looking at an old notebook
I was bored last night so I started looking through some old notebooks I had kept. I came across page after page of drafts for a poem. It was interesting to me to see the process of getting the words down to what I was actually trying to say. The early drafts became the poem "Circuits" that is in my book, The Wilderness Within.

Years ago, William Stafford, Poet Laureate, looked at the poem "Circuits" in a workshop and said it reminded him of the work of Gerard Manley Hopkins. And then he asked me, "How easy is this for you?" I did not mention the pages of drafts, but I did say that I like to play with words. I do. Writing poetry is playing with words until I get it right.

Here is the poem:  


                                                                             Circuits

Light from a star that died

shines out

from jade green eyes.

A salmon tail fans streambed stones

and dark silt swirls.

Millennia ago a star spurt fire and

now a constellation of eggs

and white milt spiral down

in black water.

Fishbone lattices litter the stream

that speaks of glaciers

and purls.

Frost flowers bloom on the cut bank

while embryos curl in sweet cold sleep below.

This books is widely available at Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble and many other bookstores.

On the Singing Sands: Lake Michigan

This beach is famous for its singing sands.  When you drag your toe or shoe across wet sand it gives you a high pitched sound.  Read more about this phenomenon in my book, The Dynamic Great Lakes.

The book is available at Barnes & Noble, Amazon (also the Kindle edition) and many other bookstores.

Mayflies: Excerpted from The Dynamic Great Lakes

Mayflies Are Indicators of a Healthy Environment

Around the islands of Lake Michigan and Lake Huron, mayflies are good indicators of a healthy

habitat. Some people call them fish flies;

there are several varieties well known by fishermen who tie artificial

flies.

On a warm day in late June or early July, the northern waters of

the Lakes Huron and Michigan and all of Lake Superior undulate

gently. Reflections of trees shine in their glassy waters. Suddenly the

surface pops with the emerging of billions of fish flies wiggling free

from their cases; they are lucky if they live to fly off before a fish

sucks them out of the water first. If they fly, ducklings, songbirds

and flocks of seagulls gobble them like guests at a festive banquet.

The graceful flies with soft bodies and transparent veined wings

that do survive, find a mate, mate, and then the female lays about

3,000 eggs on the surface of the water. The eggs sink to the bottom,

develop into larvae, or the nymph stage. On the bottom they stay for

one or two years, feeding upon plankton and molting up to 30 times

until it is time for them to emerge as adult insects, popping out of

their casings like popcorn. The life cycles begin again.

Sea Lamprey Fit for a Queen DFP

Sea lamprey, above, are protected in England, so pie-makers for Queen Elizabeth II put out a call to the Great Lakes. / SUSAN TUSA/DETROIT FREE PRESS

By Tina Lam

Detroit Free Press Staff Writer

• Filed Under

• Local News
• Michigan
• Great Lakes
• Lake Huron
• Lake Erie

Related Links

• Recipe: 15th-Century 'Lamprays Bake' (sea lampreys)

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Sea lamprey may be one of the most hated species in the Great Lakes, but it's a key ingredient in a traditional English pie that will be given to Britain's Queen Elizabeth II for her Diamond Jubilee in June.
But because the eel-like creatures are now a protected species in England, the City of Gloucester, which has given the pie as a gift to the monarch since the Middle Ages, made a request for the lamprey to the Great Lakes Fishery Commission, which was only too happy to supply them. Unfortunately, the English need only a few to make the pie.
• See a modern version of 15th-Century recipe: Recipe: 15th-Century 'Lamprays Bake'
"We would prefer to send them truckloads of lamprey," commission spokesman Marc Gaden said.
The city used to give the king a lamprey pie each year at Christmas. Since 1836, the pie has been baked for only the monarch's special occasions, such as the queen's coronation in 1953 and her silver and golden jubilee anniversaries.
Although lamprey used to be abundant in the Severn River near Gloucester, the creatures are now endangered and protected.
"It would be like us making a pie out of piping plover," an endangered shorebird in Michigan, Gaden said.
Gaden already has shipped 2 pounds of slimy Lake Huron lamprey, frozen, to Gloucester, but he is vacationing in England and will put on a tie and officially present the fish to the mayor May 4.
Sarrah Maccey of the Gloucester Folk Museum told BBC News that she and a chef will bake the pie, and she is researching ancient local recipes. One traditional 15th-Century recipe calls for the creature to be cooked in a sauce of wine, vinegar, cinnamon and its own blood, then baked in a tall crust.
Martin Kirby, a local journalist who took on the task of finding suitable lamprey for the occasion, said the piecrust is not supposed to be eaten and will be decorated with the city's coat of arms.
Gaden said he doesn't plan to eat any. No one knows for sure whether the queen will take a bite, either.
Eating too many lamprey, which he loved, was said to be what killed King Henry I in 1135, according to Charles Dickens' "A Child's History of England" and other sources. Writer Samuel Pepys mentioned in his diaries in the 1660s that lampreys were a popular delicacy.
Because Gloucester was a center of fishing on the Severn River, the city became the king's source of the fish. Today, Gloucester still has a Lamprey Hotel on its main street.
But across the Great Lakes, lamprey are an invasive, barely controlled nuisance. They attach themselves to the bodies of native fish, such as lake trout, and suck out their innards, usually killing them. After decades of working with poisons, trapping them and attracting them with pheromones, Gaden said the lamprey are about 90% controlled in the Great Lakes.
However, their numbers have been rising mysteriously in Lake Erie.
The commission, which is tasked by Congress to control lamprey, treated several tributaries to Lake Erie with a lamprey-killing poison, but that hasn't cut the population. The theory now is that the Detroit and St. Clair rivers, which connect to Lake Huron, are bringing new swarms of lamprey to Erie, Gaden said. Scientists say they hope treating those rivers will help.

Pumpkinseed

When my husband brought home some pan fish he had caught for dinner, I wanted to capture the colors so I painted a water color of one of them.  The background shows how the fish would look under water with light streaming down the water column.  Fishing is a favorite sport in and around the Great Lakes.  Read about fish and other underwater phenomena in my book, The Dynamic Great Lakes.   It is widely available in stores and on the web.

Lake Michigan Fishing off of the Pier

There are fish to be caught in Lake Michigan.  If you fish from a pier beware of rogue waves.  Some people have been caught off guard by waves that sweep them away. 

 Read about fish, both native species and planted fish such as steelhead, coho salmon and

Chinook salmon.  Read about the Great Lakes and the biota inhabiting these waters in my book, The Dynamic Great Lakes available in paperback and on Amazon's Kindle reader: $9.95.