A Place Called Cornucopia

There's a little village along the south shore of Lake Superior called Cornucopia. It's a place of blue sky and blue water, beside a blue highway. When I was quite young I looked at a map (something I've always loved to do) and thought it sounded like a place I'd like to know. Through the years, I ended up driving by there several times ... always on my way to somewhere else.

When I first returned to Minnesota from Santa Fe, I was searching for a place to settle down and this area was on my list of options. I drove over one day to take a look around. One of the things I discovered was an organic grocery store on a side street above the lake, nestled inside an older building that must have housed a more traditional store once upon a time. I kept it on my list a little longer.

Eventually, I decided to return to the area where I grew up and spent a good portion of my earlier life. It felt right. This morning, a poem from The Writer's Almanac took my thought back to the lake:


"Sailing on Lake Superior"

Before us now the edge of the earth,
below us the nearly endless cold.
Around us nothing but shimmering
water,
the miles of empty and sparkling blue.

For a few hours, the sail fills on
toward infinity. Shadows of
our delicate bodies ebb and flow
across the deck of our delicate boat.

What if the beautiful days, the good
and pacific temperate moments,
weren't just lovely, but everything?
What if I could let it fall away
in the wake, that ache to extract
meaning from vastness?

Let this suffice; the ease of thinking
it all goes on, whether we're here
to see it or not. The splashing waves,
the suntipped gulls arcing across
the radiant world.


~ Kirsten Dierking, American poet (1962 - )