Good Hart Artist Residency

Every stone is beautiful in the golden hour

eyes peeled hands in pockets mouth masked 

it’s gusty and the waves are filled to their crests with light

roaring louder than beneath our dripping overpass

the ice lies in striated floes tips out 

over the incoming tide in shelves and humps 

larger swells frothing over rounded holes

no piece of shore without a border wall of ice nowhere for the current 

to drag foaming fingertips

shoreline long as the orange-coned idle of cars coiling slow 

toward the first round of shots or the second pulled north like us like the moon

pulls the undertow beneath the darkness of the water’s skirts pushes 

the lake back onto its rocky shore cold wind whipping 

under shadow of dunes blown stories-high fenced by leaning pines 

clumped around sprawling empty summer homes and private property signs beach screaming 

yes screaming that it is here whether its owners are or not whether it is owned or not whether 

it is sunset or not but it is and everything has gone pink

slight upshore slope bearded with scrubs roots dried grass yellow and tan sand too cold to touch stones bigger stones snowbank slush mounds piled high like melting boundaries plowed outside some elsewhere shut-down mall waves cresting overtop sometimes or lapping underneath at stalactite icicles growing splitting growing from cantilevered peaks churning grey water rounded chunks floating and bashing together miniature glaciers the crack! of an ice spine collapsing small boulders filled with holes waves ceaselessly charging count them one two three four nine twenty-seven Lake Michigan the meniscus horizon haze scattered cirrus the sun—