Driving to Soaring Eagle last month, I noticed that a stretch of Highway 127 was named the Ronald Fitch Memorial Highway. It got me thinking about how the hyper-specificity of proper nouns can work in the service of preservation and/or erasure. I saw no eagles at the highly-macadamized casino. Ronald Fitch died tragically in a senseless war. I’m ambivalent about whether a highway or a poem can do him any justice a half-century later.

Cal Freeman is the author of the books Fight Songs (Eyewear, 2017) and Poolside at the Dearborn Inn (R&R Press, 2022). His writing has appeared in many journals including The Oxford American, The Poetry Review, River Styx, Southword, Passages North, and Hippocampus. He lives in Dearborn, MI and teaches at Oakland University. He also serves as music editor of The Museum of Americana: A Literary Review and as Writer-In-Residence with InsideOut Literary Arts Detroit.