I am a mirror that swallowed the sky.
—Kendall Stilwell
I haven’t started talking to the ponds yet, but they’re talking to me. I walk regularly in the Tollgate Drain, and voices shout at me from colorful signs standing beside the path. Some of them speak in the voices of the ponds, as if they want to explain what is really happening in this mini-park that some people call a wetlands and others call a drain.
“Do not call me ‘drain’ as if I were hollow,” one sign declares. “I am full. I carry the stories of rain / of soil, of roots that thirst in secret.”
“I get it,” I say. “You’re clearly a pond—or, to be more precise, a linked group of ponds, and I know you’re trying to tell me something important. But isn’t there a reason why this area is called a drain?”
By now I am talking to a pond. Is it possible everything in the world is engaged in conversation? If I listen deeply, will I be able to hear all the voices?
Standing on the path, I can hear the wheet wheet wheet of a bright red cardinal hopping along a branch overhead, the quacking of ducks from the far end of the Dead Wood Pond, the honking of geese coming in for a landing, the sound of water rushing over rocks. The voices of nature are so loud they drown out the cars speeding down Grand River Avenue.
I’m reading a sign with a poem titled “The Drain Remembers” by Kendall Stilwell. Layered under and beside the poem, photographs show the mirror-like surface of a pond that has “swallowed the sky,” a tall birch that has shed most of its red-gold leaves, sunlight dancing on the water. The sign, like the water, reflects the beauty that surrounds it.
When I first visited Tollgate, I was the newly appointed poet laureate of Lansing, Michigan, wondering if it made sense to put poems on signs along public walkways. Almost everywhere, signs tell us which way to turn, what dangers lie ahead, how far it is to our destination. What would happen if signs began to speak in verse?
Six years earlier, I’d been inspired by the Lansing Sidewalk Poetry Project organized by then Lansing poet laureate Dennis Hinrichsen. How astounding to have sidewalks speaking about hidden dimensions in our lives! But Michigan winters are fierce. After a few years, weather and the friction from many feet had eroded the sidewalk poems, and the words had become illegible.
One of the sidewalk poets, my friend Nan Jackson, told me to meet her at Tollgate so we could check out signs she had found there. Their design was sturdy, simple, and elegant. The informational “plaque” was attached to the podium by “side clamp standoffs,” which suspend the plaque above the podium, thus allowing the plaques to be replaced if necessary.
To find a source, I phoned the Office of the Ingham County Drain Commissioner, Patrick Lindemann, and within days, Pat was explaining to me how his drains circulate stormwater runoff through a series of ponds and use natural materials to remove pollution. This design protects the rivers and groundwater while allowing the drains to serve a secondary function as nature sanctuaries, which attract both wildlife and humans.
Michigan is surrounded by twenty percent of the world’s surface fresh water. Bordered by four of the five Great Lakes, we live in the heart of the world’s greatest freshwater ecosystem. While that water looks infinite, experts warn that global freshwater demand could outstrip the sustainable supply by forty percent by 2030.
By accident, I had stumbled into one of the world’s most urgent ecological and political issues: the protection of freshwater resources. What might poetry have to say about that? I started applying for grants to find out. To my amazement, the Academy of American Poets selected me for a Poet Laureate Fellowship, which provided funding for a poetry pathway at Tollgate, as well as my own education and work as a poet. With the support of the Academy, in partnership with the Mellon Foundation, what seemed like a dream began to seem possible. I called Pat.
Two years later, I’m reading one of the signs aloud, marveling at the way the poems and photographs are engaged in conversation not only with visitors to Tollgate but with Tollgate itself. When I started out, I had never visited Tollgate, and I assumed that a county drain was part of the sewer system. My worries about water pollution and scarcity were sincere but vague. While I wanted to make poetry visible, I was not trying to get poetry to speak about an urgent environmental issue.
If the Poetry Pathway Project has had a recipe for success, it has been: great collaborators, a great location, a poetry contest called “We Are Water” with writing prompts that opened portals into the natural world, writing workshops that included water science and experiential learning, “backwards thinking,” i.e. designing the project from the viewpoint of the poets and the visitors to Tollgate, and community support.
Lately I’ve been saying “It takes a village.” Pat Lindemann was open to the idea of poetry signs in county drains. To him, stormwater drains, nature sanctuaries, and works of art are perfect companions because the goal is to work together with nature to increase the quality of life. To make the project visible, Lindemann tasked videographer Scott Allman with making a video to promote the poetry contest and another to celebrate the installation of the poetry signs. Journalist Larry Cosentino wrote hilarious and brilliant articles about “The Poet and the Drain Commissioner.”
Fine art and commercial photographer Kim Kauffman took photos of Tollgate that sang in perfect harmony with the poems they were accompanying. She created graphic designs for the signs with an artist’s eye and the passion of a lifelong gardener and nature lover. No detail was too small.
The Arts Council of Greater Lansing and the Residential College in the Arts and Humanities Center for Poetry at Michigan State University helped make the process of grant writing attainable and helped me think through the challenges inherent in the project, as well as the potential. The Michigan State University Red Cedar Writing Project helped spread the good news of the “We Are Water” poetry contest to teachers and students in the K–12 educational system. The Michigan State University Water Alliance provided encouragement and celebrated our victories. The Lansing Economic Area Project (LEAP), which helps to fund the laureate project, sent the video about the poetry pathway to each of their member businesses in the Tri-County Area. The Lansing Poetry Club cheered me on.
Importantly, we used principles of experiential learning to design the project and guide the poets, thereby guaranteeing that their encounters with nature would allow them to fall in love with Tollgate and infuse their writing with precision and vitality.
These poems will find many friends.