summer sunsets in Northern Michigan
along the falls of Tahquamenon  
memories now
the campsites fire at dusk
rising embers into the sky
sat as stars
the shimmer off the falling water
rushing to go downstream to fill
Lake Superior
with new life as always intended
brook trout
brown and coho
just below the rush
raging
smaller smelt
the caviar
of a beer batter
there I grew
in a way to know
nature
her ways
her live and die
callousness
she is beauty
but severe
too great to take in
all at once
it took me forty years
to grasp
and appreciate
what it is and
what it was