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