• Peterson, Amy Lepine.  “Thom Satterlee Celebrates Søren Kierkegaard.”  The Living Church (May 12, 2013): http://livingchurch.org/kierkegaard-and-mystery?buffer_share=d0111&utm_source=buffer&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Buffer%253A%252BCovenantTLC%252Bon%252Btwitter.

• Review of The Stages: A Novel.  Publishers Weekly.  22 April 2013.  http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-1-301-08248-3.

• Green, William.  “Character, Plot, and Pastries: An Interview with Thom Satterlee.”  Taylor University English Department Blog (Feb., 2013): http://english.taylor.edu/?p=307.

• Rivers, Tom.  “Batavia Native Pens Scandinavian Crime Thriller.”  Batavia Daily News (Jan. 5, 2013): http://thedailynewsonline.com/lifestyles/article_557a3554-aadb-57c7-8f4d-e4520b164042.html

what would you want to say?

Imagine that no one will read it because

as soon as you’re finished, so is the world.

It’s rather difficult to start now, isn’t it,

knowing that you’ll end unheard,

and equally difficult to stop

knowing that the world ceases with this poem.

Of course this is all hypothetical.

You have no real pressure on you.

So why do you pinch your lip like that

and stare out the window?

Naturally, if you’d like, you could have

a bluebird in the world’s last poem

since no one will be around to criticize you

and anyway, who would mind a bluebird?

A bluebird lands near roses, red and yellow.

Good.  That’s a fine beginning.  What more?

It hunts for grubs to feed its young.

I think I see where this is going.  I’ll leave now.

It will not rise and return to the nest box.

Something more than shadow passes over the sun.

My lawn has been a place of beauty, now disappearing,

and I will miss it very much.

(thief standing at my door as a friend;

murderer hiding the knife behind your back)

then prepare to leave disappointed.

Though in the past my eyes grew big

anticipating the good or the bad you brought me,

I must advise you that I no longer live alone.

There is in me a Spirit that is stronger than me,

and by its counsel I must now cancel all accounts

previously held with you.  Please remove my name

from your list of customers and do not return again.

Henceforth, I will not be buying the merchandise you peddle.

The Great Lakes stopped

short of the border

so’s not to trouble Hoosiers

with untillable soil

always under water.

**

Who wants overwhelming beauty?

Take a plane from Ft. Wayne,

get yourself to either coast

or down to Florida, no time.

**

We do have birds: blue birds,

cardinals, herons, woodpeckers—

yesterday I watched a pileated

hammer away high up the trunk

of an ash tree dying from

that Asian beetle mess.  Well,

even twenty yards off

and other trees between us

I still saw that flash of red,

the blur of his going at it.

Obviously a working bird

putting in his shift.  Have to

respect that kind of thing.

**

I won’t lie about trash

along the roads.  You’d think

the seed companies were

marketing a new crop variety–

Polar Pop cups: creamy white

with blue markings; known

to resist all insects; simply

broadcast from car window

any season, any speed;

grows particularly well

along fencerows and

underneath mailboxes.

**

But litter goes away.

Someone picks it up

or grass grows over it.

You live here a while

you see the good deeds

of man and nature.

**

This field’s corn,

that one’s soybean.

A year from now

they’ll switch places.

Come harvest, farmers

run combines through the night.

Their headlights sweep I-69

as they turn for the next row.

In late October, neighbors

gather at a bonfire.  Sparks

rise to the stars.  Laughter

from plastic lawn chairs.

“Love your chili soup!”

“Who made the apple cake?”

The guest from somewhere else

remarks how nice it all is,

which prompts a local boy:

“Yeah, fall’s a great time

to think Indiana’s quaint.

Just don’t drive anywhere in winter

without a shovel in your trunk–

and a blanket, and an emergency kit.

It’s not that windy tonight, but

we do have something called tornados.”

**

Listen.  That’s a train whistle.

Hear it all day long.  What

does it say in short blasts,

now long wails?  Says,

“passing through, passing

through—pardon me, pardon

me.”  If it doesn’t thank

the flat land for holding

its railbed steady, years now,

I will.  This is the crossroads

of America.  This is the country

people pass through

on their way elsewhere.

Only the lucky ones stay.

You prefer even numbers.  The number ten has an especially strong pull for you.

2.

The night before the big test, you couldn’t sleep. This happened in the Third Grade.

3.

Your family expects you to set the dinner table because you alone know the rules of symmetry governing plates, glasses, flatware, and napkins.

4.

Throughout your life, people have expected great things from you and you have done your best to exceed their expectations.

5.

For you, a grocery list presents an opportunity to improve your penmanship.

6.

If you keep a personal journal, then you have (at least once, though probably many times) paused mid-sentence to check the spelling of a word.

7.

You know which brand of bleach offers the advantage of not just whiter but the whitest shirts.

8.

Before you look in a mirror, your hand is already straightening a loose hair.

9.

At the fanciest hotel you’ve ever stayed in, you found fault with the bedding.  You tugged the comforter 1/8^th of an inch to one side, then asked a friend or spouse to hold one end (head or footboard, you were willing to compromise here) while you pulled the other tight.

10.

You’re not unreasonable.  You know that the world is an imperfect puzzle.  But you also know that you were born to put it together perfectly.

You remember that time, don’t you?

Your mother held the baby on her lap,

and your father drove the station wagon

through new landscapes.  “Feeling his way,”

he called it, tracing the edges

of his mind’s map.  “Pull over,”

your mother told him.  “I can’t hold the baby

and look at the map.”  Your father kept

feeling his way past checkpoints and

ghost towns, following highways that wouldn’t

lie still for Rand McNally, but got up and changed

directions without a single sign of warning.

You were a child then and trusted

whoever steered the car.  You couldn’t understand

the air’s nervous crackling, or why

your mother stifled her scream (but screamed)

when there was nothing urgent in being lost,

plenty to look at from the back seat window,

and so what if the baby cried.  The baby always cried.

Miles passed by.  You almost couldn’t feel

the way your family grew close through adversity.

You’d almost say the whole trip was a wrong turn

if you knew, then or now, what the right turn was.

Someone else will have to speak for me

in the six thousand languages I didn’t learn.

The Board of Common Sense is final

in denying my application for polygamy.

I do not regret their decision.

You might remember me as the star

of World Cups ’90 and ’94, if I’d played in them.

A sub-three hour marathon is now impossible

without the aid of a motorized vehicle.

And there are other losses, deeply personal

and irretrievable, which I could list here

in moving detail that would make you cry,

if I still cared to manipulate feelings–

yours, mine, or any stranger passing by.

From the mud emerges many

new figures, all lined up,

row after row on the horizon.

You wouldn’t know them,

not even your nearest kin—unless…

is that him holding the empty leash,

looking around for something he’s lost?

Creation begins this way:

what was before, is no more.

Only the elements’ invisible code

pulses.  Can you feel it?  Good!

parted in the middle and feathered on the sides;

that one, there, in his Umbro warm-up jacket

and shorts the colors of the Danish flag—that’s me!

And in front of me, the black, no-frills bicycle,

stern as strong religion, handlebars properly adjusted,

tires inflated to the prescribed correct pressure,

tires that, by looking at them you know

they’ve never popped a wheelie—that’s Erik’s bike.

We should never have been a pair, we two.

You can see I’m sixteen and impish.

You can tell the bike has absolutely no sense of humor.

Why should it?  It was built for sensible commutes

along designated bike lanes through a middle-sized Danish town.

Erik probably read it The Standard Manual for Cycling Safety

each night before putting it to bed in his garage.

And here comes this American kid.

I just wanted to take it for a spin.

Erik couldn’t understand.  “A bike is not a toy,”

he said.  “You shall ride it to school tomorrow.”

I pushed.  To see how it feels, to get used to the ride.

I peddled past houses with red-tiled roofs and tidy front lawns,

but quickly grew bored and headed off for the woods…

Had Erik told me not to?  Or had he assumed

something so obvious needed no translation?

It happened that the path was slick.

It happened that I’d picked a steep one.

My body still holds the memory of falling

(gravity it turns out is universal)

and I remember the sad wobble in the bike’s front tire

when I pushed it home to Erik.  But what Erik said,

if he said anything, I can’t recall.  A look—yes, he probably gave me one.

Whatever the photo seems to say, this is true:

the next morning I rode a city bus to school.

And the morning after that one, too.

Yes.

How, the first time, you remember looking around, still hoping.

That’s right.

But you must have stopped hoping.

No, not really.

But you were telling me about something you wanted over forty years ago!

Seahorses.  I’d seen them in a magazine for children.  I clipped the form out carefully. My father wrote a check.  We mailed everything in…

After a month…after a year, surely you gave up…

Their heads were shaped like horses, and their bodies curled back like shrimp.  I was going to keep them in my bedroom, in a bowl of water.

But they never came.

I must have forgotten about them.  But something else took their place.

And after that, something else; again, something else.

Why doesn’t disappointment teach the mind to stop hoping?

For some people it does.  Would you like to be one of those people?

If I tried, I’d probably be disappointed.

That’s true.  And you’d never get over it either.