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
*
Joilet
Entered the Mississippi
Found there the paddlebill catfish
come down from The Age of Fishes
At Hudson Bay he conversed in latin
with an Englishman
To Labrador and back to vanish
His funeral gratis—he'd played
Quebec's Cathedral organ
so many winters
*
Ruby of corundum
lapis lazuli
from changing limestone
glow-apricot red-brown
carnelian sard
Greek named
Exodus-antique
kicked up in America's
Northwest
you have been in my mind
between my toes
agate
*
Wild pigeon
Did not man
maimed by no
stone-fall
mash the cobalt
and carnelian
of that bird
*
Schoolcraft left the Soo—canoes
US pennants, masts, sails
chanting canoemen, barge
soldiers—for Minnesota
Their South Shore journey
as if Life's—
The Chocolate River
The Laughing Fish
and The River of the Dead
Pa**ed peaks of volcanic thrust
Hornblende in ma**ed granite
Wave-cut Cambrian rock
painted by soluble mineral oxides
wave-washed and the rains
did their work and a green
running as from copper
Sea-roaring caverns—
Chippewas threw deermeat
to the savage maws
“Voyageurs crossed themselves
tossed a twist of tobacco in”
*
Inland then
beside the great granite
gneisse and the schists
to the redolent pondy lakes'
liles, flag and Indian reed
“through which we successfully
pa**ed”
*
The smooth black stone
I picked up in true source park
the leaf beside it
once was stone
Why should we hurry
Home
*
I'm sorry to have missed
Sand Lake
My dear tells me
we did not
We watched a gopher there