Wildfire Sun (I-94W)

By Loden Croll

I’ve heard there is a step up to pass 

Through the doorway of this world.

Creator, toying with existence,

Do you clutch a to-do list, put it off till Sunday night?

Is finding meaning in crashing waves

Just another game we have taught ourselves to play?

Even divine fear of failure strikes out some days. 

If the sloths knew their own names would they

Still love this life?

As people—dreamers, lovers, inciters of violence—we believe in a world of many names. Fate, universal sound, divine intervention. Faith aside, I believe in trees and truth. In a steadiness that will eventually fail, but does not negate the worldly influence it has while it stands tall. And, if truth promises to one day fail us in this world’s spiral into entropy, should we attempt to quicken it? If an oak tree falls in a Minnesotan’s backyard, does it matter whether another lives in southern Vermont? And does it truly live at all, if a person is not present to wrap flanneled arms around a great trunk; does it matter to the tree whether it hears its own name spoken before it hits the ground? 

There is little I can see through the July haze.

Minneapolis skyline, westbound junction, middle lane.

Someone’s life’s work is burning, 

Some creature’s home is razed.

This makes it difficult to drive on the interstate. 

What do you call the loss of the unnamed?

Who has closed the road? How am I supposed to get home?

It is not so hard to become tortured with all the thoughts of what could be, if only we were not sunk so deep into our predestinations and illusions of control. Worse, you are forced to accept that the life which you have always dreamed of is slipping farther and farther from your reach as you grow older and more in tune with the dying way of the world. That the True World—of oak trees and ancient graves and unconditional love—should be at the mercy of such fresh, bleak institutions like airport bars and interstate highways seems a great shame. How, in this New World, is any person supposed to know what it is to be the sea or be a bird, let alone be a person when there is no limit to the specification nor criticism they will endure at the hands of their own definitions.

In all the time that you do not have,

You will find a way to make your life beautiful.

To swim in the ocean and love the green

And the orange even when it leaves. 

Cry in the arms of the magnolia

For every sister and outsider searching 

For an old world to fit in. 

May it all be a little more changeable

Than we ever imagined.

Art by Lindsey Lubofsky