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.

The AAA guide says Jesse and Frank James
jumped Devil's Gulch on horseback to outrun
the Northfield posse. A must see locale.

Though that story has largely been debunked,
Splitrock done built an small tourist industry
around the myth.

Gordy sits all summer long in a cabin
with no A/C, black flies on the screens
like dog hair on a furnace filter.

Gordy sits all summer long in a cabin
with a couple Coleman coolers filled
with all the best brands of soda,

Hawkin' the t-shirts and postcards
he didn't sell last year or the year before,
but that's ole' fly-swattin' Gordy.

He keeps a list of the origins of tourists,
that's all his talk down at the Sports Cabin,
where he sits all winter long.

Between sips and drips of foam above his lip,
he'll say "Norway, Pennsylvania, Mississippi,
Japan, Iceland, Kansas..."

He might ask you if you're gonna eat that.
The pizza got cold anyway - so why not.
Plus he knows what Gloria did yesterday.

He gave a '57 Chrysler to his 10 year old granddaughter,
but she lost it after the divorce.
Her dad signed the title and left the state.

I guess that's about the state of things around here,
disappointed tourists, skunked out beer,
cold pizza, the little girl who lost her
dad and her car on the very same day.

When I was a boy, a big part of winter was going to the ice-skating rink in Winnetka when everything was frozen. We roller-skated in Glenview and bowled in beautiful downtown Northfield. Weather did not deter us. But when I turned about fourteen, this huge wind came along, and I went out and stood in it, and leaned into it, and after that I was not the same. I forgot all about school and in my heart became a wanderer. I left home one year later, off to see the world. I have had a wonderful relationship with the wind ever since.