"I am not one who was born in the custody of wisdom. I am one who is fond of olden times and intense in quest of the sacred knowing of the ancients." Gustave Courbet

30 September 2023

Granite.


LAKE SUPERIOR

In every part of every living thing
is stuff that once was rock

In blood the minerals
of the rock

*

Iron the common element of earth
in rocks and freighters
Sault Sainte Marie—big boats
coal-black and iron-ore-red
topped with what white castlework

The waters working together
internationally
Gulls playing both sides

*

Radisson:
“a laborinth of pleasure”
this world of the Lake

Long hair, long gun

Fingernails pulled out
by Mohawks

*

 (The long
canoes)

“Birch bark
and white Seder
for the ribs”

*

Through all this granite land
the sign of the cross

Beauty: impurities in the rock

*

And at the blue ice superior spot
priest-robed Marquette grazed
azoic rock, hornblende granite
basalt the common dark
in all the Earth

And his bones of such is coral
raised up out of his grave
were sunned and birch bark-floated
to the straits

Lorine Niedecker

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