Nancy Noelke

CONTACT:
2010 State St., La Crosse, WI 54601
Email:  nan@nancynoelke.com
Website:  www.nancynoelke.com

BIO:
Nancy Noelke lives and writes in La Crosse, Wisconsin, nestled between sandstone bluffs and the Mississippi River. She started writing in journals at an early age, then fell in love with poetry and short forms as she navigated work and family life. She retired from Gundersen Health System after a twenty-five-year career as a leadership consultant and coach. She holds a master’s degree in higher education administration and a bachelor’s degree in psychology. She holds a life degree in curiosity and wonder.   

Nancy’s work has appeared in The Physician Executive, HR Magazine, Spirituality and Health Magazine, Global Advances in Health and Medicine, Coulee Region Women’s Magazine, Essential Inklings, Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets’ Calendar, and The Metaworker LitMag. 

PUBLICATIONS:
What We Keep is Nancy’s first published poetry collection.

Poetry

Geography of Childhood

Like vagabonds we roamed,
sidewalks our domain, through 1964.
With PF Flyers on our feet and
Wonder Bread in hand, we winged 
down alleys, wind-danced
with clothesline sheets,
the heady scent of lilacs
and cicada buzz filling the air.
Every house on the block
was in some way our own, 
every mom our second mom, aproned
in the background as we longed
for something dangerous to happen. 
We foraged for wild things,
uncovered a Playboy in Mr. Smith’s gravel,
traded candy like high-stakes poker,
pricked our fingers in a blood pact
to friendship and sisters, to secrets,
to never growing up.

Landscape of Home

In response to "Wild Geese" by Mary Oliver

I feel at home in your wild.
I don’t have to be good or tame.
Soft body loves what it loves.
Your backwater wetlands seep into bones.
Sandstone bluffs guard old man river.
Sleeping rock giants have stories to tell.
Tell me yours, and I’ll tell you mine.
They call you driftless, left behind.
I drifted too. Along your lifted ridges, cool valleys,
damp caves, stream beds and banks.
Your nature offers itself again and again.
Each day a new call.
Today, trumpeter swans bugle their return.
And high in the flyway, wild geese announce
their place in the family of things.