Storyteller of the Week

Marilyn Zelke Windau

 

 

 

Marilyn Zelke Windau developed her love of reading and writing when she was a child and her mother walked her sister, brother and her to the library every week. They brought home bag loads of books. She liked the pictures in books the best because she read the stories visually. Cozied in the bathtub with her blanket and pillow, is where she learned to read.

Her father would recite Longfellow’s :“This is the forest primeval, the murmuring pines and the hemlocks, bearded in moss and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight.”

Fairy tales were “indistinct.” Dick, Jane, Sally and Puff were not. She learned to make up her own stories and started writing them down as poems when she was thirteen. Before that time, she drew pictures of them.
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Marilyn was born in Chicago, a big city by a big lake. She followed the lake north to Highland Park, where she completed middle and high school. She studied at Ohio Wesleyan University and graduated in art education from University of Wisconsin-Madison. She has been a waitress, an art gallery manager, a teacher, a poetry and art workshop facilitator, a docent at an art center, and a Master Gardener volunteer.

Lake Michigan, her first sea because she could not see across it, led her travel across the Atlantic, tour Europe with a friend. Later, she studied aboard a ship: a semester at sea, which took her to many ports around the world. Her travels continue and thave both broadened and condensed her world, have shown her sameness and diversity. She has gathered stories in abundance.

She lives in Sheboygan Falls, Wisconsin now, a small city by the big lake. She is  retired now from teaching elementary and middle school art, is married to a retired water resources engineer. and they  have three married daughters and three grandchildren.

Marilyn says her: observation of people, places, and events figure prominently in her poems.

“Some observations are factual, some created from imagination. I believe both have merit, with those from imagination having a greater say. When we stop imagining, we lose the ability to go forward, to create. We get stuck in a history box of another’s creation. Our world needs to give credence to innovators, imaginers. From them, wonder can be realized.”

Marilyn has published five books of free-verse poetry, one self-illustrated, including Hiccups Haunt Wilson Avenue, The Water Poems, Owning Shadows, The Aging Poems, Beneath The Southern Crux and Momentary Ordinary. Her work has also appeared in Your Daily Poem,

Comments by Sharon Waller Knutson

I was charmed and delighted with Marilyn Zelke’ Windau’s poetry when I first read this poem on Your Daily Poem in 2013.

Listen to Your Mama

When ocean mama wave sends
her little droplets out to play,
she warns them to stay away
from boats, trawlers, cruisers.
You may visit the sailing ships,
the ones that follow the winds
as we do, the ones that calmly go
in time with us, our currents,
our moon pulls.
They are safe.
Those others with their motors—
they will churn you,
turn you to foam,
make you white with fear,
toss you into the air,
the air which can evaporate you.
No smelling salts can save you then.
Listen to your mama,
you wet behind the ears droplets.
I don’t want to lose you.
Be home for supper.
We’re having hydrogen oxygen casserole
again.


I was impressed right away with her individuality and creativity in personifying the ocean. I could tell immediately that she was an artist as well as a poet because her poetry paints vivid portraits of her scenery and characters, I am proud to publish these visual insightful poems Marilyn sent me.

Passage Rites

There was a shiny brightness to your face,
reflected in faceted fire on your finger,
when you suddenly appeared at my desk to say,
“Come in the living room, Mom.”
When had you arrived?
I hadn’t heard a cry, a whimper.
I thought you were content, dreaming
in sleep with your pink binky and Puff Puff.
When had you grown up so much?
When had you learned to walk and talk
about life and love and marriage,
to be so electric, so bold and strong
and sure of your future?
Your past was hardly minutes behind me
and you, so confident, in your love
for another
wanting to share, to show and tell,
you were beaming.
I remember beaming.
It was when you pulled yourself up
to gain the swing
to fly free
in our backyard.

From Hiccups Haunt Wilson Avenue (Kelsay Books, 2018)
 

 A Box

 Sometimes, when he came in the back door,

 after arranging the car into the one car garage 

 maneuvering it in from the alley

 at a 90 degree angle,

 having dodged the other cars, newer cars,

 up thousands of numbered blocks in the city,

 from downtown to Jefferson Park,

 he still smiled.

Giving her a kiss on her left cheek

and a cross-arm hug to us three
at his knees,
he produced from under his topcoat,
the herringbone one
with the two inch grey buttons,
a box.

One inch thin, five inches wide,
ten inches long, white,
with gold cursive lettering,
it said, “Fannie May Candies.”
We, the three, whooped with joy.

The box was set on the kitchen counter.
At dinner, we ate every vegetable we saw.
We licked our plates with tongues,
with fingers, readying for the joy.

Ceremonially, the box was presented
first to mother, who claimed
an “M” for a maple cream.
My brother, who was youngest,
was offered it next.
He looked for the calligraphy of “C”
and bit into chocolate chocolate.
My older sister finger-touched
row one and two and then with urging
selected “H” to match her name initial,
bit into hazelnut and smiled.

My turn was difficult,
because I knew what I wanted.
I wanted “V” for vanilla buttercream,
Dad’s favorite.

I looked, stretched my finger,
changed direction and chose “R”
for raspberry.
It was scrumptious.

Once, Dad guided my hand back,
gave me his “V.”
I gave him a brown drool grin
to return the love.

From Herbs & Spices A Flavorful Poetry Anthology (Highland Park Poetry Press, 2023)

 

Heritage in a Spoon

As a little girl, I watched my father make vegetable soup.
He chopped onions, celery, carrots,
peeled and cut up potatoes, ladled tomatoes,
added sweet corn, broccoli, peas.
McCormick tins came down from the shelf:
salt, pepper, thyme, marjoram, and dry green bay leaves!

He stirred this wonder with a long wooden spoon,
inherited from his mother.
Smooth to his hand, cracked a little at the stirring edge,
he drummed the 15” spoon off the side of the kettle.

My grandma was gone from me at age 3.
Her spoon became a favorite kitchen sight.
When it was brought out from the drawer,
I knew soup was coming!

That spoon now has a place of honor on my counter.
It towers over other utensils in a red filagree container.
The spoon can chat with the flour canister next to it,
exchange culinary advice with long-stemmed garlic bulbs.
My grandma’s spoon gives advice to the new bamboo tongs,
urges a smaller wooden spoon to stand erect.

History is ladled from this spoon.
I can visualize my father and his brother
standing at the woodstove, asking when the soup will be done.
My daughters gather around me with the same question.

From Beneath the Southern Crux (Water’s Edge Press 2023)

 

Use Your Imagination

From the beginning, he dreamed in stories.
He would wake up on his palette of reed grass
in a fury of thoughts.
He knew his grandmother’s tales,
but in the night, in his sleep,
he embellished them into plots
which grabbed him from slumber.
He thought it an illness,
went finally to the shaman,
asked her, “What can I do about this plight?”

The wise woman said to him,
“You must use your imagination. It is a gift.”
“But how can I use it? I have no tools,” he said.

“Ah,” she said, “Do you not go to the river to seek fish?
Let the waters flow your thoughts into speech.
Speak your stories. Repeat your stories.
Those that understand their value will remember.”

“Take the yellow and red ochre of our clay.
Take the kohl of our firesticks, cooled from embers.
Use them to make marks, pictures of your thoughts.
Draw on the walls of the high terrace caves,
on the skins of our animal gifts from hunt.
Hang them for all to see.”

“Drop-spindle the hair of your alpacas.
Use the skin of onions, cochineal,
indigo to dye it.
Weave the powers of our universe—
the condor, the puma, the snake—
in cloth symbol stories.
Wear this garment proudly and in their honor.”

“Go down to the river, scoop the mud of the banks.
Form vessels. Incise your stories there
in the wet of our mother earth.
She will help you to help all recall
and reply the meaning.”

“Use your imagination. It is not a plight.
It is a gift. Offer it graciously to our people.
It will be remembered.”