Adventures of the North Shore House-Sitters
I live up North now, off the shores of Lake Superior. I have two dogs who take me on two walks a day. I am the sort of man who owns a collie and a snorting pug. They nose about the neighborhood for breaking news; one claims a cottonwood as I inspect the tree for metaphors, but find a cottonwood and nothing more. *** Evenings, my wife and I wind up within a stone’s throw of that inland sea. Its wind smells nothing like the tang of ocean breeze, more like fresh snow sown over evergreens. *** And now we’re cruising Highway 61 along the misty north shoreline—the one Bob Dylan sang about—tunneling through autumnal poplar, pine, and birch. But who can say what Dylan saw that brought to mind Abraham’s near-sacrifice of Isaac— thick brushwood for the offering, a flame amid combusting leaves? It ain’t a shame not one of us can say. The music is enough. We listen to the music. Listen. *** Out on the waves, a surfer sits his board the way a cowboy would his broken horse. *** Grand Marais. At The Fisherman’s Daughter, we share a steaming cup of salmon chowder, viscous and maple-smoked and savory with peppercorns, lemon, fresh parsley. I watch her scrape the cup, lick the spoon, a little sad we hadn’t ordered two. *** The sea’s a beater of a vehicle, with thousands upon thousands of miles. You say a little prayer every time you turn the key, hoping for that sublime connection called internal combustion. Oftener than not, these days, the engine sputters and stammers to an iffy start, an aging maiden with an ancient heart. *** Midnight. I wake in a blanket of dog, a swirl of pug between my feet, a log of collie heavy on my chest. I see out of the dark huge, floating paws, twitching in what appears a vivid dream. That canines dream should give us pause if we’re inclined to reckon our perspectives on the real reality itself. A dog can steal away into a secret world, each night, where he might swim among the fishes, or fly. *** Beneath long evening light the lake’s a lake of quicksilver. Our son of one is taking in the beach, literally taking fists of cold Wisconsin sand into his lips, his tongue, the tongue he’s lately come to find a useful tool for sampling life’s rind. A sun, a song, a longing, or a tooth— there are so many ways to get some truth.
Cameron Brooks is the author of Forbearance (Cascade Books, 2025). His poems are found or forthcoming in Poetry East, Tar River Poetry, New Verse Review, North Dakota Quarterly, Cumberland River Review, Ad Fontes, and elsewhere. Cameron holds an M.F.A. from Seattle Pacific University and an M.A. from Princeton Theological Seminary, but he calls South Dakota home. He lives in Sioux Falls with his wife and son.
Poet’s Note
Like many these days, I’d been reading about how digital technologies increasingly mediate modern experience. This got me reflecting on the nature of mediation more broadly, how life always seems to come to us via some filter—be it our senses, our minds, or our metaphors. The question I kept returning to was what it might mean to contact reality directly. Virtually every philosopher ever has taken a stab at this question, and none of it makes for much poetry. Dogs always make for poetry, however, so “Adventures” begins with the two pups I watched for a stint on the Minnesota/Wisconsin north shore. Ultimately, I see it as a dialectal poem about the mysteries of perception.
Note from Mary
Cameron’s poem drew me in immediately with its couplets and tone—there’s no crashing or strafing of the coastline here (in the poem and the place), but rather the gentle lapping of lines across our ears. The poem is charming, its gentleness charms us, allowing us to take a step back and meditate. The mixture of pure and off-rhyme adds to the sense of amiability and tenderness. Our minds are wandering and pondering, not arguing or pushing or pulling. The truth is all around us. We don’t always need to force it; we can let it lap right up to us. Plus, there are dogs in this poem and I love dogs, especially ones that “nose about the neighborhood / for breaking news.”