The edges of everything wave, big bluestem slanting westward toward lake, toward sun. In the morning quiet, a covey of cranes hover over corn, an expedition, their rattled whoops deep and raw—from the other world. Across a gravel drive, hayfield, the neighbor’s skeletal pole barn rises like a sturdy ship. As if that is all we have ever done. Erect walls of timber, hinged. Transport ourselves over fields, dunes, oak savannas stretching past settlements, wild indigo, paintbrush, milk vetch, horse gentian. Sing me a moment of crow fly, chitter-yip of flicker, the way a hummingbird whizzes, tiny invention. Honeybees settling in rocket spikes of purple prairie clover, gripping hold, swinging in summer wind. I am forgetting the need to blame someone. Way out here in the ratcheted stillness, where milk cows used to loll against fences, sheep wandered and goats bleated for mama, I am wondering what kingdoms await us on the other side of our trimmed and captive living spaces where surely we will worship petals, wings and other curios we cannot form by hand.
Ellen Stone
Ellen Stone has lived in Michigan for nearly 40 years and considers northern Michigan her spiritual home, and the Great Lakes her waters. She grew up on the north branch of the Susquehanna River in the Appalachian Mountains of rural Pennsylvania. Ellen taught special education in Kansas and Michigan public schools for 35 years while raising three daughters with her husband. She advises a high school poetry club, co-hosts a monthly poetry series, Skazat!, and is an editor forPublic School Poetryin Ann Arbor, Michigan. Ellen’s poems have appeared recently inDunes Review,Indianapolis Review,Third Coast, andMichigan Quarterly Review Mixtape. She is the author ofEverybody Wants to Keep the Moon Inside Them(Mayapple Press, 2025),What is in the Blood(Mayapple Press, 2020), andThe Solid Living Worldwhich won theMichigan Writers’ Cooperative Press chapbook prize in 2013. Ellen’s poetry has beennominated for the Pushcart prize and Best of the Net. She was a 2024 Good Hart ArtistResidency Writer in Residence.
Reach Ellen at www.ellenstone.org.