Karen Wils photo

ESCANABA — If you’re a Yooper, you must love…

“Trees” by Joyce Kilmer, “The Song of Hiawatha,” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and “Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening” by Robert Frost.

You must love poetry.

From the tip of the Keweenaw Peninsula to the Straits of Mackinac, Upper Michigan is pure poetry in action.

The three famous poems listed here are all about things, places and emotions that Yoopers can identify with.

Joyce Kilmer writes, “I think that I shall never see a poem as lovely as a tree,” and then he goes on to talk about a tree’s nearness to God.

Well, every Yooper certainly has a favorite tree that inspires prayers and peace.

The long, long “The Song of Hiawatha” is an epic poem, in other words it’s basically a book.

Not an easy poem to read, much thought must go with every stanza of this poem. Ojibwa words and English tell the love story of Hiawatha and Minnehaha. It’s well worth your time to slowly read through Longfellow’s words because they are about the U.P.

The rushing Escanaba and the Pictured Rocks Lake Superior shoreline, the birchbark canoe and the chattering red squirrel in this poem are still parts of our everyday life.

And who among us has not stated at one time that “Stopping by The Woods on a Snowy Evening” was our all-time favorite poem?

In Robert Frost’s poem, he stops his horse after a busy day just to sit still if only for a moment or two to watch the freshly falling snow decorated the woodlands with white.

How many times have you and I just stopped to watch the falling snow too, even if we have seen Old Man Winter’s magic hundreds of times before?

April is National Poetry Month. Libraries and schools have poetry readings and promote creative writing and reading.

In today’s modern world of cell phones, text messages, emails and social media, words are losing out. Abbreviations, symbols and emojis and slang have replaced many good old-fashioned sentences with a subject and a predicate.

Some people think poetry is a dying art. Some people say poetry isn’t for tough Yooper folks. But they are very wrong.

Poetry is everywhere… in the lyrics of the local song writer’s ballads… in the traditional hymns at church… in the prayers written by second graders… in the music flowing from the radio… in blogs on the computer and in nursery rhymes in rocking chairs all over the U.P.

I know so many tough, crusty, old Yoopers with a favorite poem of prayer tucked away in a special place in his or her wallet just to treasure.

APRIL SNOW

A tear escaped my eye

And caught my check in total surprise

I had, long ago outgrown

The need to cry

Was it something in the April sun?

A memory or a thought

That triggered the stray drop.

The moon was orange and

Hung half visible in the east

The snow was sugar snow

April snow, only to be sacrificed

To the April sun

Born to die, heart to cry

The maple’s sugar rises

Like love, a sweet syrup

April snow is a big wet kiss-a kiss goodbye!

——

Karen (Rose) Wils is a lifelong north Escanaba resident. Her folksy columns appear weekly in Lifestyles.