LAKE MICHIGAN

le lac

Charlevoix was but a dream now
As the breakers crashed
Over the bow
Fingers spreading
Like an enormous hand
On the deck
The Big Lake
Was just a-toyin' with us
Hollis, the old man, said
Seeming confident
Silver hair
Waves in the gale
80 years to my 8
He would tell me about the Chippewa
The Ojibwe
That prodigious tribe of nomadic warriors
And how they named her
Great Water
The red-wooden-hulled vessel
Stedfast and stalwart
Mainsail stretched tight
This is the hardest part, he shouted
Until we clear
The channel
Narrowing
Path
The
Berth
Our noble craft
Worked
From all sides
The maiden crown
South Pierhead astern
We're right in her now
Mishigami


Les Lac

I've never seen you desperate or speak to anyone.
You wouldn't know your name-- are fluid without it:
Empty gate, sloppy balloon, teaching steps
To diving, floating, and to the many dead you hold;
Deep recluse-- a cloud who couldn't choose
Between earth and what? Fish swim through your hair.
Drunken maniac-- who said, you said, but not to me:
Your bubbling milk counts stones on shifting shores
O lighthouse fads, leaves lost in your palm,
The moon bobbing bewildered among thirsty stars
In the surges of your footprint, the June,
the woven wool, and the obstinate chill,
claiming the flats-- roiling, roiling.


the lake

a single smooth stone
slick with your weather
knows you better than
all the bearded captains
and though
jealous of salt seas
i can taste your fight
deep down in my belly
when the sun cools
into your depths
and the only sense is
sound
all the whispered moments
on and under you
for even now miles away
i hear your waves inside me

*%*-- a little give and take with a Hawk, L'a-ro, & Vikingo