The Farmer’s Market was full this week. Full of locals, visitors, firefighters, and kids of all ages. The City Band played, the food trucks and the produce trucks and the bread tables and the artisans showed up.
It was a continuation of what Ely, Babbitt and Tower came together for last weekend in place of a cancelled festival. It was small town magic. Something, I think, that we all may be the very best at, whether we realize it or not. Sure, we’ve won several contests… “the best little town” or “the greatest paddling place” or “the most fantastical blueberry pancakes” or… there’s some more specific titles we hold. You know what I’m saying.
However, what we’re really good at, is being genuine, being ourselves, being there for each other and pitching in when the storm clouds roll in. God knows that over the years the end of July has seen some stormy events. One of those even flattened the festival a few years ago. Perhaps nothing as volatile and dangerous as these wildfires have been, though. And that’s the kicker, the worse it gets, it seems the brighter we shine. I’ve observed that we don’t shine like gold or silver, or even with the sparkle of diamonds flashing off the breeze blown crest of a rippled lake. We shine with the sheen of sweat, the glint of something glassy in the dust and chafe from a chainsaw, the darker shadows of dirt collected in wrinkles around the eyes and creases in our hands from good, hard work. In each of our jobs, our hours of volunteerism, our finely crafted arts and our concern for each other and Ely and its surrounding communities, not to mention the much-answered prayers, we throw ourselves with abandon. We can be extra, yes. We can throw one heck of a Fourth of July Parade and Fireworks extravaganza. We can “fest” with the best. But, not unlike my friends, the Hobbits, what we are really good at is much simpler. Somehow, someway, when each of us play the parts we’ve practiced for so long, when the show must go on, when it matters more than it ever has had to matter, the curtain call will meet with a standing ovation.
Whether you’ve lived here your whole life or this is your first trip round the sun as an Ely resident. “Small” town includes “all” town.
I worked on this poem Tuesday night in between writing poems for customers and selling pottery and fish decoys. I thought that you might like it. Sure, it is about summer and the stuff I usually write about, but it is also about you and me. It’s about Ely and these lifesaving waters that our community and surrounding homes are nestled in amongst. It’s about more than 1000 firefighters risking life and limb and sacrificing time away from their homes and loved ones to protect yours and mine. We slip through the net, we get our hands and our hopes dirty. Together we Ely. And yes, I used it as a verb.
Wild
Swift Summer runs by
like a canoe drifting through the current
over the long water grasses.
Our words — concerns, thoughts,
worries and haunts
lost in the noisy rattle
of cattail moments shaking in the wind.
Caught like the silvery sides
of a trout in the nettted
sharps and flats of a Song Sparrow’s harmony.
Hanging like the leftover taste of wildfire smoke
in the morning.
Gone like the Grass Spider’s
webs burnt off by the first early heat that chases out the fog.
Fleeting friendship,
arriving at dawn
dressed in yellow; with not-so-invisible capes
smelling of salvation.
Running on… Summer doesn’t wait, it races
towards Autumn, towards the first flakes falling,
towards a sleepless cold.
Together, we outpace it.
Together. We win.
©Timothy James Stouffer #elystreetpoet 07302026 All Rights Reserved
