The Cannon River spills over the dam by the historic Ames Mill. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted photo April 2025)
WE COME TO THE RIVER. The Cannon River, spilling over the dam by the Ames Mill. Roaring. Churning. Then flowing under the bridge and between the walls of the Riverwalk in downtown Northfield.
Enjoying beverages and time together beside the Cannon River in Bridge Square. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted photo April 2025)
We come here on a Sunday afternoon, on an April day of temps pushing into the sixties, the sun beaming warmth upon us, upon the land, upon the river. To sit. To walk. To lean toward the river. To simply be outdoors on an exceptionally lovely spring day in southern Minnesota.
The mood feels anticipatory, joyful, as we walk ourselves, and some their dogs, along the riverside path.
Historic buildings hug the Cannon River (and Division Street) in Northfield’s quaint downtown. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted photo April 2025)
I come with my Canon camera in hand. An observer. An appreciator of the sun, the sky, the warmth, the river, the historic buildings, the people and activities happening around me. In some ways, the scene seems Norman Rockwell-ish, Busy, yet tranquil. A slice of small town Americana. Everyday people enjoying each other, nature, the outdoors. Life.
Fishing by the Ames Mill dam. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted photo April 2025)
Many carry fishing poles, tackle boxes, containers of bait. Anglers press against the riverside railing, dropping lines into the water far below.
Caught in the Cannon, a sucker fish. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted photo April 2025)
I watch as a young man pulls in an unidentifiable-to-me fish (later identified as a white sucker by my husband). His friend snaps a photo of the proud angler and his first catch of the day.
The top section of the Riverwalk Poetry Steps. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted photo April 2025)
After hanging around the river by Bridge Square for a bit, I descend the colorful Riverwalk Poetry Steps, a river poem crafted by a collaboration of 17 poets. We come to the river starry-eyed/across bridges reaching out to neighbors/over the river’s rushing waters…
Following the Riverwalk to find a fishing spot along the Cannon River. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted photo April 2025)
I trail behind a couple, a family, a dog, another family, all of us connected by the water, by this place, on this spring day. I’m the only one to pause and read the poetry.
A family fishes the Cannon. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted photo April 2025)
Atop the river wall, young women sit, sans shoes, while they fish. We all watch the river flow. Bobbers bob. A pair of ducks—one pure white—flies low, skimming the water before landing upon the surface of the Cannon.
“Lady Cannon,” a riverside mural by Maya Kenney and Raquel Santamaria. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted photo April 2025)
Across the river, Lady Cannon watches. Fish swim in her tangled waves of locks, flowing like water down steps toward the river. She is the art of the Cannon.
On the pedestrian bridge looking toward the Cannon and the Ames Mill, right in the distance. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted photo April 2025)
I see art, too, in a railing shadowed upon the pedestrian bridge. I linger, mesmerized by the moving water, the riverside historic flour mill a block away.
There’s so much to take in here. So much that connects us. The sun, the sky, the land. And the river that flows beside and below us.
The Riverwalk Steps Poem alongside the Cannon River in the heart of downtown Northfield. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted file photo)
I FEEL FORTUNATE to live in an area of Minnesota which values poetry. Some 20 minutes away in Northfield, poems imprint upon concrete throughout the city as part of the long-time Sidewalk Poetry Project. Along the Riverwalk, a poem descends steps. In the public library, a poem graces the atrium.
Sidewalk poetry in downtown Northfield carries a powerful message.(Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted file photo)
But that’s not all in Northfield. This city of some 21,000 has a poet laureate, currently Russ Boyington, who fosters poetry, organizes and publicizes poetry events, and leads an especially active community of wordsmiths. These are published poets, serious about the craft.
This anthology published in 2024.(Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted file photo)
Five seasoned Northfield poets recently collaborated to publish a collection of their work in We Look West. Even if you think you don’t like poetry, you will find something in this anthology which resonates. These poets take the reader through the seasons of life with humorous, sad, nostalgic, reflective and introspective poems. This anthology is especially fitting for anyone closer to the sunset, than the sunrise, of life.
A serene country scene just north of Lamberton in southern Redwood County on the southwestern Minnesota prairie. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted file photo)
April, National Poetry Month, marks a time to celebrate poets like those in Northfield and beyond. In my own community of Faribault, we have an especially gifted poet, Larry Gavin, a retired high school English teacher and writer. He’s published five collections of his work. Larry writes with a strong sense of place, his poems reflective of his love of nature, of the outdoors. A deep love of the prairie—he attended college, then lived and worked for a while in my native southwestern Minnesota—connects me to this remarkable poet. Plus, Larry has the rich voice of a poet, which makes listening to him read his poems aloud an immersive, joyful experience.
A chamber choir, directed by composer David Kassler, performs artsongs written from poems in 2017, mine included. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted file photo)
I, too, write poetry and am a widely-published poet, although certainly not as much as many other Minnesota poets. From anthologies to a museum, from the Mankato Poetry Walk & Ride to poet-artist collaborations, billboards and more, my poems have been out there in the public sector. Perhaps the most memorable moment came when a chamber choir performed my poem, “The Farmer’s Song,” during two concerts in Rochester in 2017. David Kassler composed the music for the artsongs.
Two of my rural-themed poems are included in an exhibit, “Making Lyon County Home,” at the Lyon County Historical Society Museum in Marshall. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted file photo)
Poetry has, I think, often gotten a bad rap for being stuffy, difficult, too intellectual and unrelatable. And perhaps it was all of those at one time. Butt that’s not my poetry. And that’s not the poetry of Larry Gavin or of the five We Look West Northfield poets or most poets today. The poetry I read, write and appreciate is absolutely understandable, rich in imagery and rhythm, down-to-earth connective.
My most recent poem selected for the Mankato Poetry Walk & Ride. Poets must follow character and line limits in writing these poems.This is a competitive process.(Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted file photo)
When I write poetry, I visualize an idea, a place, a scene, a memory, an emotion, then start typing. The words flow, or sometimes not. Penning poetry is perhaps one of the most difficult forms of writing. Every word must count. Every word must fit the rhythm, the nuances of the poem in a uniquely creative way.
Not the pancakes Grandpa made, but the pancakes and sausages made at the annual Faribault Lions Club Pancake Breakfast. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted file photo)
One of my most recent poems, “Pancakes with Grandpa,” was inspired by an exchange between my husband, Randy, and our grandson Isaac, then four. It was printed in Talking Stick 32—Twist in the Road, an anthology published in 2023 by northern Minnesota based Jackpine Writers’ Bloc. It’s a competitive process to get writing—poetry, fiction and creative nonfiction—in this collection.
So, in celebration of National Poetry Month, here’s my pancake poem, penned by a poet who doesn’t particularly like pancakes.
One of several immense cottonwoods looms next to the parking lot.
DAYLIGHT WANED AS RANDY and I entered the woods at River Bend Nature Center by the parking lot near the entrance. We haven’t walked this area in a while and were surprised to find the woods littered with fallen trees and limbs. Not just a few, but lots. I expect the powerful winds during a September 2018 tornado in Faribault caused the damage.
From atop a hill, I looked toward the lowlands. We’d just walked the path to the left after exiting the woods.
As we hiked, the shrill trill of frogs in the nearby wetlands reverberated. I’m always amazed by this spring time opera/mating ritual.
The treeline that caught my photographic eye.
A ways into the woods, the dirt path bent right, with another forking to a prairie outlook. We continued on the chosen trail until I noticed a copse of lean trees I wanted to photograph. “I’m surprised we don’t see any deer,” I said, stepping across dried grass and branches to find an open space through which to aim my camera lens.
To the left in this photo, a deer leaves the protection of a treeline.
I snapped a few frames before Randy noticed a lone deer. The deer obviously saw us, too, as it emerged from behind the treeline and leaped through the tall prairie grasses.
There’s something about tall grass that speaks to me. Perhaps because of my Minnesota prairie roots.
We continued down the trail, now on the other side of the horseshoe shaped route that connects with the main path into this section of River Bend. Once on the arterial trail, we walked a short distance before turning right toward the swampland. The overwhelming chorus of thousands of frogs increased in volume to the point of almost hurting my ears.
I love the simplicity of this scene.
Underneath, the ground felt spongy. Occasionally I paused to photograph something. A lone bird atop a bare tree. Tall grasses silhouetted against an evening sky shifting toward darkness. I wished we’d arrived a half hour earlier for optimal lighting during a photographer’s golden hour.
We turned and partially retraced our route once we reached this point leading to the prairie.
But sometimes it’s good for me to simply walk and take in my surroundings. To appreciate the natural world with my God-given eyes rather than through the eye of a camera. To be in the moment. To hear the soprano of frogs singing spring songs in southern Minnesota in early April.
Ponds populated by trilling peepers reflect the changing blue of the sky.
Geese honk territorial warnings best respected.
A camouflaged bird blends into stands of invasive buckthorn.
Dried vegetation proves a visual reminder that spring is not yet fully here in Minnesota.
But tell that to the woman walking barefoot.
Just behind the boys with feet still snugged inside winter boots.
At River Bend Nature Center in Faribault, people hiked and biked and rested on benches and even tracked squirrels in Sunday’s 60-degree temps. (More on the squirrels later.)
If not for the forecast of major snowfall later this week, I might believe these brown woods will soon leaf into a canopy of green.
No one would doubt that on Sunday, an ideal day to delight in the outdoors, to read poetry in the woods.
Spring spread her wings over River Bend on a lovely early April afternoon in southern Minnesota.
Buds are bursting in these trees along the Cannon River in Dundas.
This weekend brought spring to Minnesota, just a week after an historic blizzard. And the mood shifted dramatically to exuberance as Minnesotans soaked up the sunshine and warmth, me among them. I even sport a sunburned forehead.
“Thin ice” signs remained in place at Lake Kohlmier in Owatonna on Saturday. Edges of the lake were open, the middle still iced.
We haven’t had temps this warm—in the 60s—since October. That’s too many months.
In Nerstrand, a contrast of seasons in a melting snowman and yard art.
On Sunday afternoon Randy found enough snow for a snowball.
Randy and I took a drive in the Rice County countryside this weekend. Snow still remains in shadowed spots.
While winter still lingers in melting snowmen, patches of snow and ice on lakes, I see spring everywhere.
In budding trees and pussy willows and blooming crocuses. Even in mud baking dry in the afternoon sun.
Biking Sunday afternoon along a back gravel road in Rice County south of Northfield.
It was shirt sleeve warm weather in Minnesota on Sunday, this scene photographed in Faribault at the intersection of Minnesota State Highway 21 and Seventh Street.
People were out and about everywhere—biking, riding motorcycles, pushing strollers, pulling wagons, walking, running, drinking craft beers on brewery decks and patios…
A fitting sign outside Chapel Brewing in Dundas on Sunday.
There was this feeling of we’ve finally made it. If you’ve ever lived in a cold weather state, you understand that delight, that giddiness, that joy which marks the first really warm and sunny day of spring.
Randy pulled on his shades as we each enjoyed a glass of beer on the riverside deck of Chapel Brewing Sunday afternoon.
Smiles abound, jackets are shed, sunglasses pulled on, winter released. Even if snow still remains in shadowed patches, we understand that spring has arrived in Minnesota. Finally.
The snowy scene in my southeastern Minnesota neighborhood Tuesday afternoon.
LIVING IN MINNESOTA, I find that winters sometimes get long. Too long. This has been one of them with unseasonably cold temps—try 15 degrees in my part of the state on Easter morning—and now more snow.
Snow falls thick and heavy in my Faribault backyard.
Heavy, wet snow. Snow globe snow. Beautiful, yet the kind of snow that can slick roadways if it sticks to the surface.
Aiming my camera lens upward, I see snow flying against a grey sky bordered by bare branches. Note: I edited this image to make it more visually appealing.
The kind of snow, too, that is termed heart attack snow. No explanation needed on that one.
I am wishing for spring. For no more snow. For 50 degrees. Heck, I’ll even take forty.
Minnesota Prairie Roots 
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