Sven and Olie died and went to Hell. After awhile, the Devil came by to see how his new guests were doing. To his amazement, he found Sven and Olie were still wearing their winter gear and seemed to be quite comfortable. The Devil asked why they weren't hot.
Olie replied, "We come from Minnesota where it's always cold. This is feeling pretty good to us." This upset the Devil, so he turned up the thermostat. Awhile later the Devil looked in again on Sven and Olie. To his surprise he found they were still wearing their winter gear. The Devil questioned them on it again. "You have to remember that we are from Minnesota and it's very, very cold there. This is feeling nice to us."
The Devil was even madder at this, so he turned the thermostat all the way up to maximum temperature. The Devil waited some time and then went back to Sven and Olie. This time he found they had only unzipped their coats, but still had all their winter clothes on. The Devil couldn't understand what was going on. The punishment down here was supposed to be the unbearable heat. It wasn't working on these two. He had to ask again what the deal was. Sven replied, "We are Minnesotans and we just got over a freezing winter. This is really great for Olie and Me.
A light flickered in the Devil's mind. He went to the thermostat and turned it off. He thought if the heat wasn't a punishment, maybe he'd give them some freezing temperatures. A little while later the Devil came back to check in on Sven and Olie only to find them cheering and giving each other high fives, happier than ever! The Devil questioned them on their actions and Sven said happily, "Back home they always said, the Vikings will win the Super Bowl when Hell freezes over!!!"

source: http://www.jokebuddha.com/Minnesota#ixzz3Ge5tdz3A

Strange bird,
His song remains secret.

He worked and he read,
drank a few beers and laughed.
There was no other way.
Fifty years in the 3M plant a dustless sterile place –
his place in this world.

Murdered, I was left to rise from this black ditch of a river.
A black Missouri swan
rising from the chemical tar of this strange water.
The Missouri River,
a tomb from which to rise.

Hatred could have been the shuddering in his soul.
Silence could have been a frock for anger.
Once a young man, fleeing to Chicago,
he returned still furious for freedom
full of confusing words and the politics of poverty.

To be close by the big river is to be home again.
Back to my only country where the white rose blooms.
Returning from a ghost town, the old loneliness intact.
I have no roots but the ones I drag behind.
I am poor.

Soon, darkness will set in and he will loom in memory
the way new snow drifts in the from the west.
His ghost will float along the river to Montana
where he will sit, the water will flow past
and he will be younger, older than I am or ever will be.



Quotation from Youth by James Wright

Strange
This hatred of factories.
I have never been in one.
Fifty years my father labored in a factory making film.
There is no evidence he ever took a picture.
There is a family portrait
taken by a neighbor I suppose.
My father is looking away from the camera,
his gaze focused somewhere the camera cannot see,
none of us can see.
He could be whittling a root
or on a bridge waiting for the ice to break.

It is ten years since the factory closed,
my father gone.
As I look at the portrait now and try to follow his gaze,
I can see the river running around the locks
through the arches, past the dark bones of factories
out to a casting sea.
He never talked to me about his life in the factory
but sometimes when I turn over late in the night
I hear his voice
whispering to my mother, her whispering back.

Winter, I am walking alone.
The place is bare but for the fence posts.
Gray, splintered wood, smooth texture
when caressed in the right way.
This hard earth meets each stride
with the sting of cold rejection,
a reminder my soles need repair.
Behind that line of ash and cypress
the sun is looking away –
vague light leeches through the leaves,
heat does not penetrate the shadows.
Could there be a blessing –
warmth or a cushion of grass?
The sun casts an empty halo
around an early moon.
The moon too is vague and cold
but it does not look away,
it feels like a blessing;
the darkening sky, the hard stars,
blessing the day into night.

Northfield, Minnesota,
a flood warning issued at 3 a.m. comes too late for her.
Caught on the wrong side of the river,
alone, unhappy on high ground
she lays down her book The Sixth Extinction,
its glittering story of glittering skeletons
has become too prophetic in this deluge.
All around, people on high ground
fine tune satellite dishes
to catch the latest pictures
of their neighbors stunned faces
as yet another **** gives way,
one more street goes dark,
another dead dog washes up on the lawn.

As the river reclaims its ancient banks,
renews its title to the land
she goes down to bathe in its soft brown hands.
She can remember the morning.
She can remember the evening.
She can remember her neighbor’s dog barking.
She is too young to remember the dry days
of high spring when birds on scarlet wings
flew low under a terrible blaze of stars.
She is old enough to understand the river’s life,
its single unrelenting purpose – return to the sea;
to understand we cannot live like a river.