Guest Writer Spotlight, Marc J. Sheehan

Denise Rosen: Fossil in Rock ~Enlarge

This week we honor guest writer and poet Marc J. Sheehan.

Unlike most of the guest writers and my fellow editors, I am not a native of the Great Lakes region and I have not been living near the lakes for very long. My first visit to Lake Michigan was in 2006 and I swam in the lake for the first time this past summer. So as I took over managing the Great Lakes programs here at Biodiversity Project, I came with an outsider's perspective.
In 2009, the Town Hall has created a space for sharing a ton of great information and writing about the Great Lakes environmental and policy issues. Starting in the middle of this year, with what may have been the first movie reviews on the Town Hall, I started writing articles and recruiting guests that would fit into the Arts and Culture section of a traditional media outlet. Over the following months, writers, painters, photographers and movie directors shared their history and inspiration found in the Great Lakes.
As my contribution to the Great Lakes guest writer Honor Roll, I wanted to highlight one of my favorite weeks on the Town Hall this year. While I normally start my day with coffee and the news, during the week of September 8, I started with poetry. Marc Sheehan not only shared a poem each day, but prefaced each one with a beautiful reflection on writing and the Lakes.
Beyond the beauty of the words themselves, his poems are so powerful because they are not overtly "nature poems." As Marc describes his own work at the end of his week, "The poems I have blogged about earlier have not been ‘nature poems' in the sense most people would think of them....I'm interested in that intersection of humans with the natural world. I like tourist towns off the beaten track, beach weddings in bad weather, vacation houses closed for the winter. I'm a sucker for the sense of longing."
Thank you to all the artists who participated this year and thank you to all the readers, viewers and listeners that help keep the arts alive in our region.
Going above and beyond, Marc created a new poem to premiere on the Town Hall that I have included below.

The Beach Weddings
by Marc Sheehan

It feels more mid-autumn than mid-August

today, windbreakers in lieu of swimsuits

and gulls hunkered down against a brisk wind.

All-conquering love will have to conquer

this too - low-scudding clouds spitting cold rain

on rows of unlit tiki torches leading

to a heart-shaped trellis flanked by potted ferns

where guests are getting their chance to photo

the bride in her billowy dress and groom

in his untucked dress shirt and cargo shorts.

As these things go they seem to be splitting

the difference between formal and ironic.

Once, I witnessed a whole line of bridesmaids

giggling at the sherbet rainbow they formed -

behind them, dune grass waved benediction,

while the groomsmen in their Hawaiian shirts

cheered for the barefoot bride and groom and

a singer belted out Jimmy Buffett.

Personally, I like those weddings

where the men maintain the dignity of nuns -

those old, inscrutable ones in habits.

Seeing them, you think of our ancestors

emerging from primordial water

to don tuxedos and monogamy.

And the bridal party in white, blinding

as unmeltable snow-women, sculpted

flakes of desire that have escaped the slatted

fences the city strings to manage drifts.

You want the minister to ask the couple

to take each other in solid or liquid,

red flag or green, rip current or calm.

Afterwards, the newlyweds wave to bathers

from a limo stretching into the future

while gulls pick grains of rice out of the sand.