The Journey
Welcome to The Journey, a space where Mary McKSchmidt shares her transition from business executive to advocate, photographer, poet, and storyteller. Here, she invites you to walk alongside her as she explores life in the Great Lakes region, its beauty and fragility, and the bonds that connect us all.
Call of the Red-Winged Blackbird
I am sharing this very personal poem to honor the poets of Myanmar, individuals who are being shot, burned, and imprisoned for writing their truth in a country whose elected government was ousted by the military earlier this year. May we find other ways to reconcile...
The ‘girl’ on Windmill Island
Were it not for her name, we would have missed her. Tens of thousands of eye-popping tulips, the unfamiliar music of the street organ, the Friesian horses in the field, the replica of the Dutch village, the romantic allure of the red and white bridge, and the winding...
The Boatman’s Dance
Photograph taken by Cary Stemle across the river from Louisville, KY. In response to the invitation from Anne-Marie Oomen and me to write a love letter to water, I received this poem from grade school friend, Eric Stemle. As I study the writing of poetry with master...
Creating Art from the Heart
The month is February, the month of the heart. The year is 2021, the year after one defined by masked and socially-distanced relationships, isolation, and airwaves pummeled with heated and, often, toxic political debate. The voice of award-winning...
After Reflecting on 2020, The Poet Speaks to the Swallowtail
You did not warn me about storms,how each drop of rain is likea bowling ball battering your body;how the slightest decline in temperaturecan send you spiraling to the earth’s floorwhere hungry beaks and sucking mouthsanxiously await your floundering arrival. I did not...
Learning Another Language
“. . . But Only God Can Make a Tree” Joyce Kilmer The orange-breasted birds greet us like old friends,two women escaping the suffocating walls of a lingering pandemic. Her arm around mine, perhaps for balance, perhaps intimacy, perhaps...
The Breakfast Bench
The Breakfast Bench Concealed by a family of Dutch immigrantscast in bronze and framed in flashy hibiscus,surrounded by black-buttoned gold called Susans, a clumpy hedge of roses, a wall of waist-high grasses, the bench, the two women agree, as they stroll arm-in-arm...
Courage to Do the Right Thing
To escape the sometimes-suffocating walls of the pandemic, we walk. Mother in her Tilley hat, me with a camera, arm-in-arm, we find joy and adventure exploring the parks in Holland. A favorite is less than a mile from her home. No matter how often we visit, we...
“But Only God Can Make a Tree”
Last week my mother introduced me to the first two stanzas of Joyce Kilmer’s famous poem, “Trees,” a poem she memorized as a child and has not recited since. The words slipped out when we came upon one of the last remaining trees along a favorite riverbank now defined...
Safe Water: Learning from Flint
I heard a knock on the door while I was editing this video about safe water and handed my first-ever “boil water” alert. The utility considered it a precautionary measure—expressing concern about a broken water main nearby and the potential for bacterial contamination...
Remember Schoolhouse Rock?
It took lead contaminating the water in Flint and destroying the dreams of several generations now facing neurological disorders, learning disabilities, heart and kidney disease, and reduced fertility . . .It took Michigan-specified testing, adopted in...
Yellow
For Phoebe (“Miss Febb”) BurnsPerhaps it was the translucent effect of the sun on the petals of its namesake’s drooping head that caused her to pause. Perhaps she, too, felt her shoulders lift in the sun’s light, shedding, for that moment, memories of her husband’s...