sharing spaces collection
July - October 2022
This collection was born from a community-engaged poetry project aimed at exploring ideas of public space, solidarity, scarcity, and abundance. In exploring abundance and public space, I focused on the most obvious example of that in Winona, the East Rec. (Not coincidentally, the East Rec was also the site of one of my 2021 Writing In Place pop-ups, and it’s a place I’ve been going to for several years.)
A bit about the Rec: The East End Recreation Center, or East Rec for short, sits on a city block directly east of the Basilica of St. Stanislaus Kostka. The block is divided roughly into quarters, with a small park on the northeast side, a community garden on the southeast side, basketball courts on the southwest side, and the blue and white recreation center itself on the northwest corner. One block away from busy Broadway, the streets around the East Rec are relatively quiet most of the time, except for the occasional motorcycle roaring around the block. On weekends and bingo nights, St. Stan’s parishioners’ cars line the block, then depart as quickly as they arrive.
To a passer-by, there’s nothing special about the East Rec building or the block. But the precast concrete building and cracked asphalt basketball courts belie a constant, rich hum of activity. Kid-sized bikes and scooters cover the sidewalk in front of the door to the Rec, their riders having dashed inside to greet their friends. Many of the activities at the East Rec are informal, drop-in style, which allows kids and families to use the East Rec without barriers like start times and participation fees. Year-round, the place comes alive in the afternoons and often earlier, drawing kids from the neighborhood and around town, along with adults who use the gardens and basketball courts.
The environment at the East Rec is one that encourages happy chaos and spontaneous play, and it’s a critical space for the kids who use it. There are hundreds of reasons a kid might want a safe, indoor place to play that’s neither home nor school, reasons that run the gamut from boredom to working parents to issues at home. No matter the reason, the East Rec is there for its young patrons, who come not only from the neighborhood surrounding the Rec, but also from across Winona, since it’s the only free, indoor play space of its kind.
The block the East End Rec sits on has been a space for kids since at least 1876, when Washington School was built there to serve the area’s mainly Polish, working-class population. In the 1930s, the block was conveyed to the city for park and recreation purposes, and the kindergarten annex of Washington School housed the recreation center for about 50 years.
From Winona Daily News archives, newspapers.com
By the late 1980s, the Washington School building was on its last legs, and the city council voted to demolish the old building. There weren't any immediate plans to build a new one, but people in the neighborhood fought for the center, and the kids who used it.
“If they want to tear the old rec down — more power to them, but not until they have the plans and the funds to build our children a new one. No one wants children hanging on street corners with nothing to do,” wrote Winona resident Sally Johnson in a letter to the editor in 1986.
Shortly thereafter, voters supported a $500,000 bond issue, and construction on the new recreation center began in 1987. Community donations helped fill the new space with equipment, games, and furniture.
Over the years, the East Rec has served as a polling place, a farmers market location, a site for afterschool and summertime activities. Adults use the gym for volleyball, basketball, and pickleball. Proms and graduation parties have happened at the Rec, along with Thanksgiving meals and National Night Out parties. The services at the East Rec have changed to align with needs in the neighborhood, a community garden replacing a skate park, an indoor gym replacing an outdoor skating rink.
Recently, city leaders explored a plan to transition the East Rec block to a police and fire station and rebuild the Rec nearby, but decided to stop pursuing that plan after hearing from hundreds of community members who love and use the Rec, myself among them. We were concerned that the plan would displace the Rec’s youngest patrons, and patrons of color, and that the value of the community center - including where it is, and what surrounds it - was being underestimated. Now the block is no longer threatened with drastic changes, but it remains in need of renovation and more programming.
So I sought to explore the value of public spaces, and what gets in the way of investing in them. In August, I co-hosted a hot dog and popsicle party at the Rec with some of my favorite people from the Winona Public Library and The Joy Labs. They were celebrating the completion of a mural that transformed the Rec’s walls into an exuberant rainbow, with a focus on resilience. Before I went, I asked a series of prompts online via Facebook and my website, and I brought the same prompts to the rec, plus one new prompt. I was honored to receive over 40 responses from kids and adults.
Below you’ll find a series of poems, many of them inspired by what I heard from community members. Their words, in italics, are woven between my poems.
If you’d like to leave your thoughts on this project, you are welcome to do so here.
what does abundance mean to you?
Summer solstice. Abundant light & growth
Somehow this reminded me I didn’t check the zucchini patch today, which is a kind of abundance we foster. People really do leave them on the table in my post office just below the murals of local flora and fauna.
Plenty!
A perception of endless possibility/opportunity
—
In my thirst
I drink pine sap
Lips and chin glistening with it
I want to flow the way it flows
Completing a circle
In my hunger
I eat this gnarled oak bark
My molars caked
with brown knots and ooze
My skin grows leathered wrinkles
I sprout a single leaf
—
…Plants are blossoming. Fruits and vegetables are ripe.
…having the opportunity to share a meaningful dinner with a good friend.
Having a vast amount, so you can share with others
Abundance is having all if not more than what we need to be happy
—
You do not have to be big
Or strong or fast or effective
You can be small
And messy and slow and
Take up space
And this too is power.
You do not always have to be
Learning or working actively -
These things will happen
On their own
As you move through the world
With kindness as your aim.
Dear one, you decide what is enough.
You call enough abundance
And it is.
—
Time recorded in the pauses
Between paragraphs
Between pencil to page
How many years now I have done this
And made a practice of it
With whatever abundance or sliver
Is given to me - that I can give.
So often through afternoons
Sweetly finite with their slanty light
In faith that there is some meaning here
Something savory and lasting
To be carried along for later.
—
Abundance is both tangible and intangible. We can count our tomatoes and know we have an abundance, but we can also live our lives abundantly…
a deep feeling of “here and now is good and needs nothing added to it.”
more than enough to fill your need, and to share freely
—
We have come so far
and there is so far to go
What we hunger for
Starts and stops like rain
So soak yourself
Become what is life-giving
Linger in the ground
Until the plants come up
—
yummy & free form … fruity loops. Spiralic. Stretching luxuriously in a moment.
—
when you yawn,
the universe fits
into your mouth
—
overflowing
I had a dream where several extra kids showed up in my children’s bedroom. I felt worried and confused and then I looked into their room and the walls were lined with more twin beds than I needed and I started laughing really hard. That’s abundance to me: surprising, freeing, and absurdly funny.
—
where does abundance live?
in what kind of house?
if abundance were a house
it would be at the corner
of connection
and music
and the confluence
of enough
and endless
it would be simple
a garden
and a door painted with rainbows
and always open
where somehow
there is always one more chair
at the table
one more bowl and spoon
one more paintbrush
one more inch of wall
to fill with art
one more hot dog
one more tree to sit under
and be alone for a moment
where do you notice abundance in Winona?
spiral here
at the community center:
in the abundance of voices
and green vines
bouncing balls
and walls splashed with color.
and you know the feeling
wandering the stalls
of the farmers market
in September -
everything ripe and glossy
still holding summer’s light
in these spaces,
the center
the market
we are given over
whether we linger
or gather what we need and go
something inside us thrums
at the aliveness there
—
traffic cones
I notice the most abundance in my community where people give selflessly
in music
—
Sometimes what bubbles up is
Heaving gulps of laughter
Indistinguishable from sobs
And with as many tears.
The circle completes itself
I can’t hide from joy or lament.
They come to me like breath,
Like clouds and sun.
—
I notice abundance in the lack of affordable housing
litter
I notice abundance when there seems to be scarcity - somehow there is enough
—
Early fall
And I listen to the bees gather
What they know they need
Watch butterflies flicker from clover
To thistle to goldenrod
Energy and warmth for cold months ahead
The fuel that dormancy requires
In the season of rooting and rest
—
An ode
To the house with dust in the corners
Always: a mote here and there
Even after sweeping, the sock and rug fibers
And miscellaneous hairs
Quick to pile up and coalesce.
To the indoor air always alive
With floating skin cells and such,
Detritus that reveals a lived-in place
These dusty shelves proclaiming
How cozy we are
—
what do we need?
we need water and sunlight
food and a place to sleep and stay warm
or cool. we need connections with
each other as humans, with the world
around us, with ourselves as spirits.
we need love, not in some abstract sense
but the feeling of being loved
that makes us breathe open like moonflowers
to the cool evening darkness
we need kindness from strangers
a feeling of community even if we prefer
to be alone, so we are not lonely,
so we do not despair.
—
abundance
we see it in the bikes outside the rec
always three or four or five there
ditched hastily outside the door
their riders already coloring
or dribbling basketballs
their pedals shifting slowly in the wind
a magnetic place
we long to see more of –
playgrounds repaired and courts repaved
walking distance
from anywhere
—
will you persist
as the garden vines die back and wither?
and what form does persistence take
in growing dark and cold -
soil dry and loose and shaken
by the uprooting
and the wind?
we learn from what rots and remains -
last year’s tomatoes
in this year’s eggplant patch
needing nothing but warming nights
and lengthening days
to burst to life again.
sometimes abundance is dormant
sometimes cold
What gets in the way of communities investing in public spaces?
When I asked this question, I wanted to encourage folks not to knee-jerk to symptoms — for example crime, litter, graffiti. Here’s how I framed this question on social media:
“The next question is about shared, public spaces - things like parks, libraries, recreation centers, benches, bus stops. We're digging a little deeper, trying to understand *root* causes, the reasons underlying the way things are. My challenge for you is to think on the community level, not just your personal experience.
The question for today is: What gets in the way of communities investing in shared, public spaces?”
$$$ MONEY $$
profit
the private people buy up all the community places or spaces and turn them into bars or Uhauls
rabid individualism
fear of change
—
what gets in the way:
private buy up
fear root systems
different priorities
individualism rabid self
interest money
money profit
private futility
not my job
grumpy distance
shut the windows
lock the doors
fence
adults only
no kids allowed
—
thinking about what we plant
how to remediate polluted soil
the years of careful compositing
and cultivating
mycelia and their
otherworldly fruits
with constant attention
to what grows
—
“not my job” grumpy attitude
sense of futility
MONEY
too many places for only adults enjoyment only
different priorities
—
in the way:
fear of one another,
echoing louder over time
I find myself wondering
how far back must we go
to uncover the source
—
what used to be:
a park for every neighborhood.
in their retreat I trace a calcification,
green stems to brittle bones
new growth rare, one leaf in a decade.
every pattern has a root
within a pattern:
checkerboard fenced backyards
parking lots, private
priorities
profit
what color represents the rec to you?
This prompt was one I took to the Rec for the hot dog party. I had small canvases and paint markers and asked guests - mostly kids, with a few adults - to share one color that represents the Rec.
—
cause Blue
Rainbow because I see rainbows on the wall
yellow: I pick yellow because the rec is as bright as the sun
green fun
—
nearing the end of an off year
year of not enough
of fragile connections we attempt to reignite
like visiting a community center again
after a long absence
a bit overwhelmed by all the light
and movement, the eruptions
of voices in tiled hallways
the paint markers mysteriously sticky
but we reach for them
because we need the color
finally not so concerned
about the exact source of the stickiness.
this is practice for being alive:
presence, awareness, taking in
rainbow walls holding up
fluorescent sky
—
yellow and blue and green -
the words suggest openness and life
the joys of a park
brought inside for rainy-day, hot-day,
cold-day fun
colors we associate
with light, brightness
because blue
an endlessness of sky
that has no edge
and green the favorite color
of the Rec coordinator who has poured
ideas into this space
and for the point in the summer
when yellow shifts to gold
projected on white concrete walls
long light, last light
amber light of a bulb cover
yellowed by 30 years of sun
I see rainbows
on the wall
what will become of us?
This final section arose out of a Creative Community Leadership Institute writing workshop led by Laree Pourier. Laree led us through a series of prompts encouraging us to dream about what a better future might look like, one where everyone has what they need. The prompts lingered with me over the summer as I worked on this project. Here’s what I ended up with.
what will become of us?
—
feeling for a way to make poems
about our shared stuckness
sprinkled with a bit of mourning
about our dreams
and what the going-through is like
this question lingers with me:
what will become of us?
and an equal sense
that we are in this mess together
and cannot choose our companions
—
Love poem for metamorphosis:
Before you reach the end
My dear
You will travel far
Your skin will be marled
Like these stones
—
What I want is to tell a story
You recognize - mostly new
And not belonging to you
But with just enough that is common
To cause a ripple of familiarity.
You know what it is
to struggle.
To care for a screaming child
To wander the aisles of a market
Forgetting what you came to buy.
You know what it is
To experience
An upset stomach
A sudden inability to speak
Without crying.
You know what it is
To laugh what sounds like sobs.
To be broken
To wake up anyway
To give a small kindness to
A child, a coworker, a stranger -
Sometimes you have chosen that
Without choosing
And at other times you have turned away
As I have.
It is a story of returning always
to the cord we hold together -
Faces, bodies, breath -
The sudden warmth of someone else’s hand
Amidst two years’ ruin
Impossible to separate
Although, bless us, we tried.
—
what does it mean to praise? who will
teach us to sing?
when existence itself
is praiseworthy –
even these hands.
lately I’ve been thinking of weaving,
the inner filaments of what it means
to be myself in my body.
one thread catches
the whole cloth
—
on a dull morning
a green heron speeds just above the lake
all neck and wings
it’s a late spring -
no sign of life in the trees
except for the birds sheltering there.
what is resurrection?
I no longer seek forgiveness
what I long for is what the heron seeks
a quiet place out of the wind
that I can come and go from
—
what will become of us?
we are so tired
and yet we hold the vision of a future
without violence, scarcity, hierarchy.
we bring each other along –
the motorcycle rider who blares
and backfires and reminds us of gunshots
will be there
and the community gardeners
will be there too.
what will become of us?
some kind of metamorphosis
is around the corner
some kind of death and rebirth
after gas, after oil
what will become of us?
when we have agreed to provide
for each other
when we have agreed that life itself
is worthy of a home, food,
and medical care
lettuces bursting out of cracks in asphalt
toddlers jumping over them
in yellow rain boots
every garage transformed into a home
what will become of us
careworn and torn apart
how will we invite each other
into that wide open place?