At Sleeping Bear Dunes, Upon Learning the Mother Bear Will Someday Disappear

Emily Patterson

 
 


I.



We slip out of dusty shoes,

let the heat of the dunes

scald our soles. These sand

mountains, formed by glaciers

and wind, made a Mother.

II.

 

Inside the visitor’s center, 

my daughter presses buttons

on a plastic topography. We learn

Sleeping Bear Plateau is a barren 

place, a disappearing space.

III.



The Anishinaabek told a story

of hunger, a Mother driven to water.

When her cubs drowned, they became

islands. Mother Bear hugged the shore,

bloomed a black forest of memory.

IV.



My daughter peeks between

wooden slats on the outlook, searches 

for shipwrecks in the teal water. 

My daughter, who does not yet know 

loss, insists she sees it.

V.


One day, the Mother Bear

will erode entirely. Even now, 

her body is a ghost forest. 

The memory of what she was 

hovers above her. 

VI.



I hold my daughter’s hand, point to 

the Mother’s shifting shape. 

My own eyes skim the distant water, 

wanting to believe our looking 

is enough to keep her here. 

 

Emily Patterson

Emily Patterson (she/her) is the author of three chapbooks, and her debut full-length collection, The Birth of Undoing, is forthcoming with Sheila-Na-Gig Editions in 2025. Her work has been nominated for Best Spiritual Literature and appears or will soon appear in SWWIM, North American Review, Christian Century, CALYX, Wild Roof Journal, Sweet Lit, Stirring, and elsewhere. Emily lives with her family in Columbus, Ohio. Find her on Instagram @emilypattersonpoet.