November 2018
NOTE: Evergreen park is a hilly, wooded park about three miles from the present shore of Lake Michigan. German refugees from the 1848 Revolution came to live in Sheboygan. I like to think that their presence still lingers. More about me and my poetry can be found at sylviacavanaugh.com
Morgan le Fay Haunts Evergreen Park
Streaks of pale sand
salt the memory
nested in horizons
of dark organic soil
12,000 years and counting
these sloping swells might be old dunes
or fossilized waves
swollen to the crest
they used to say she dwelt
to the west
across the ocean
could our glacier
have been her crystal
carved palace
German immigrants
with 1848 ideals
may have sensed this
from their own
nearly forgotten folklore
even before they stepped foot
in Sheboygan
today Georgia and I pretend
to read omens
in the winding word
of an unnamed stream
fallen sticks create eddies
we seek to be edified as rushing
water spills secrets
into the hollows behind stones
we listen closely
but can’t yet decipher
the sweet water sea
has long since retreated
from this upland park
I need to find a wild apple tree
it may be all that’s left
of sorcery
Published in Songs of Eretz Poetry Review
© 2018 Sylvia Cavanaugh
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