summer poems

May-September 2020 -

This collection took a few months to take shape. I’ve been dealing with the wave after wave that was this summer, taking deep breaths in the troughs between.

I’m a white Minnesotan who grew up in the suburbs. I went to private schools and didn’t realize racism is still a problem, is everywhere like pollution, so rampant I could grow up without noticing it, the way you get used to your own smell, until I was in my early 20s. I used to assume justice would happen naturally. I don’t anymore, and this summer was yet another grim display of how much work we still need to do.

And now. I’m a contemplative poet. I like to write into the spaces between things. But it didn’t feel right to create my quiet poems after Minnesota police senselessly murdered George Floyd. In many ways, it still doesn’t feel right. So much is still undone, and who am I to write poems about it. At the same time, I’ve been clinging to art as the one ringing bell of clarity amidst the noise. Reminding me I am here. We are all here together at the exact same time.

When I started this website, it was an effort to just be brave and put my work out there. I feel it’s important that I take whatever tiny platform this project is seriously, and speak to things that matter, be they beautiful or tragic or both.

So here are the summer poems. A summer of murders and protests and COVID-19. A summer of rescuing turtles crossing the state highway, running on county roads, and emailing politicians, hoping for change. The newest poems appear at the top.