At Sleeping Bear Dunes, Upon Learning the Mother Bear Will Someday Disappear
Emily Patterson
Image by Brian Beckwith
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.