Collecte Works (34 page)

Alone

a still state hard

as sard

then again whisper-talk

preserved in chalk

At last no (TV) gun

no more coats than one

no hair lightener

Sweetheart of the whiter

walls

Why can't I be happy

in my sorrow

my drinking man

today

my quiet

tomorrow

And what you liked

or did—

no matter

once the moon

dipped down

and fish rose

from under

Cleaned all surfaces

and behind all solids

and righted leaning things

Considered then, becurtained

the metaphysics

of flight from housecleanings

Young in Fall I said: the birds

are at their highest thoughts

of leaving

Middle life said nothing—

grounded

to a livelihood

Old age—a high gabbling gathering

before goodbye

of all we know

North Central

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

Joliet

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