I live by the Mississippi Gorge, at the confluence of the Mississippi and Minnesota Rivers. I taught poetry 21 years at Macalester. I jog daily along the Mississippi Gorge a Great River Road, which runs from Lake Itasca to the Gulf. I row thousands of miles in the gorge with Minneapolis Rowing Club in spring, summer and fall, ski on the frozen river in winter. I bring visitors from around the world to the river, including Gary Snyder, Bei Dao, Ghassan and many other Pulitzer and National Book awardees, and Nobel Prize nominees. I took students to paddle the entire Minnesota River three times, guided by Minneapolis Indian Center director and Dakota medicine men, historians and story tellers. We also paddled the headwaters of the Mississippi, from Lake Itasca to St. Louis River, for canoeing and camping. These trips changed students’ lives. I also skied, paddled, biked, rowed and walked the entire Mississippi four times, doing art installations, giving poetry workshops, spreading seeds of peace, joy and hope through arts along the river, connecting the Upper, Middle and Lower Mississippi. People call me Flag Lady. I compare myself to Johnny Apple Seeds, except I carry the seeds of poetry, to sow hope for our mother earth.
My neighborhood Highland Park is going through big changes with the transformation of the old Ford plant. New residential buildings and parks are rising, and new business too. I walk by the construction sites every day, talking to people, recording historical changes. I use google local guide app to review each spot, and have attracted 29 M views.
I feel blessed to live on the bank of America’s longest and most important river, and nourished daily by its water, soil, air and communities, physically, geologically, culturally and spiritually. For its 100 anniversary, NPS commissioned me to write a poem about the only gorge of the entire river. Here’s the ghazal I wrote:
And the Old Man Speaks of Paradise: a Ghazal
Do not move. Let me speak of a river in paradise
A turquoise gift from fiery stars-that is paradise
How do you measure a river’s weight, color, smell, touch?
How do you feel the veins of sand in a breathing paradise?
Eons of earth story, long before rocks, plants or bones
Bulging with flesh and blood in every corner of paradise
You call me Old Man, 12,000 years old, but really, I’m a baby of
River Warren, swollen with glacier water flooding the paradise
My torso sloughed by old ice, two cities on sandstone bluffs
Headwaters of a 2350-mile road towards the gulf of paradise
A walk along the beach, a bag of rocks, fossils and agates
Each tells stories of river, land & life-a kinship of paradise
Come at dawn by foot, canoe or single shell. Meet my children:
Eagles, foxes, beavers, trees…along a ten-mile gorge of paradise
And walleye, redhorse, gar, stoneroller, sickleback, drum, bass
Mooneye, buffalo, bowfin, sunfish, darter…in the wave of paradise
And St. Anthony Fall walking 10 miles upriver from Fort Snelling
Clams and shells in Kasota stones-a layered history of paradise
Put your fingers into the bluff, and pull a handful of sand
From the Ordovician sea, each perfect to make a paradise
From time to time, I take you into the amniotic womb
A reminder of our origin from a black, red, white, blue paradise
Do not dam me. To move freely is to evolve is to thrive
Locks feed fear feed hate feed violence to the base of paradise
The Mississippi, temple on Earth, home of all living things
Would you tread with love, through the heart of paradise?
We are water--H2O-two hands cradling an open heart
Pulsing, dissolving, bonding the Earth to a green paradise
Stop seeking before or after life, for a paradise already
Within us, each cell of sentient being-that is paradise