by Terry Savoie
come carrying digital cameras, binoculars, sketch pads,
several un-blemished notepads & the best
& finest fishing tackle, stay weekends or, if richer,
linger for weeks if not the entire summer.
They hope to capture & carry away bits of this place:
loons, great blue herons, the fleeing & fleeting white tails
of startled deer, yes, perhaps even a four-foot marauding musky
or maybe even a few heavy stringers of sunfish to fry.
When they finally decide it’s time to leave, they’ll exit with
a vague belief that they have captured its Spirit, the very Essence
of these Northwoods, yet for those remaining who live on the wind,
on water, on this land, they’ll continue to generate, survive, & then re-
generate with nothing more in mind, no past to hold to, no
future in sight to reach out toward or hang their hopes on.
When the tourists have long gone from all vacation
diversions, gone back to those never forgotten
horrors – the heartaches, headaches, the mis-
steps they thought they left behind –
here Nature holds its ground.
Beyond a previous appearance in Portage, nearly four hundred of Terry’s poems have appeared both here and abroad over the past four decades. These include recent or forthcoming issues of The American Journal of Poetry, One, Bluestem, Cortland Review, America, Chiron Review and Birmingham Poetry Review. Terry’s chapbook, Reading Sunday, won the Bright Hill Competition and was published in the spring of 2018.
Portage Magazine 