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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