Looking Out Over Lake Superior - March 29 2022

 

Looking Out Over Lake Superior

March 29 2022

My view of the lake

is through a narrow space

between two houses across the street.

A tempting glimpse

of the flat hazy line

of a distant horizon,

and rising above it

a high limitless sky.

Of blue water

sparkling with sun.

Where, from this distance

frothy white breakers

materialize out of nowhere

then as quickly disappear.

I watch them coast toward shore,

randomly dotting the surface

as if painted on

with an artist's whimsical eye.

Small sailboats

ride a stiff west wind.

A rusty red freighter

steams left to right.

Gulls, screeching belligerently

wheel and dive.

The lake is immense,

extending as far as I can see

out past the horizon

and over the curve of the earth.

As if the water drops off its edge

into some terra incognita,

where the maps have yet to be filled

except for “here be dragons”,

and fierce mythological creatures

rise from the sea.

Or might as well

because it's all alien to me.

The big cities

where it's hurry-hurry-hurry

and everyone keeps to themselves.

The factories

shrouded in a heavy grey pall;

the acrid smoke of burning coal,

the sulphurous flinch

of sour gas's smell.

The exotic foreign lands

where the tropical sun is sweltering

and I can’t understand a word.

The great lake,

both an opening to the world

and an impassable moat.

Oh so beautiful,

but moody, and lethally cold;

it seems to invite me to brave

its foreboding calms

and sudden storms.

But makes it easy to stay, as well,

here, in the peaceable kingdom

safe on shore.

As the world outside falls prey

to its dragons and krakens and snakes;

the monsters

real and imagined

that lurk out past the horizon

where the great lake ends.