Copper Country

 It's beautiful up there, and you shone.

At home on the rocky shores of Lake Superior,

I was a smooth stone for skipping; you were sunlight on the water.

What I didn't understand was the night that far north.

Red-haired, speaking with a hint of Quebecois,

you drew me immediately, because I was little rocks beneath the tide

and mistook you for sunrise and a pleasant peninsula.

What I didn't understand was Gichigami's jealous nature.

Any geologist sitting on a stool in any tavern in copper country

can tell you that a rock can be both solid and fragile.

He could describe the smooth, sharp, shell-like fractures

called conchoidal. But he is drinking, leave him be. 

I brought heft with me, I thought, cases of books

and a hard restlessness, cold to the touch and longing not to be.

Laying eyes in you, I sensed your spark and mistook it for warmth.

Copper conducts, it borrows, it doesn't hold a damn thing.

I am a little of this, a little of that--a collector, I carry some of everything

that has ever touched me. I am worlds, a common rock, a human.

You are what you are, pure in your own denying way, charged but empty.

What I didn't see then was that I was seeking brightness down a shaft.

We lay together in the cooling nights, the snow came, ten-twelve feet.

I thought I was strong, and that you were worth every devotion,

but I was flint, cracking and stabbing as we loved, and you were 

never meant to be moved, turning weedy green in the northern air.

I miss copper country. It's real, though mined out now. I've moved south,

grown older, living alone, staring into the fridge at midnight as if at stars.

And you? You dug in deeper, a disused light on the shore, pretty and dark.

What I didn't understand was that we would hurt each other so much,

and that it would matter so little. The indifferent lake still shines and sighs.

__________________

for my friend Dora at Dverse Poetics: Lyric Petrologies

My father was fascinated with the history of our state, and took me with him all over, explaining and teaching as we went. There is nothing quite like being taught by a teacher who loves his subject. 

Michigan's state motto is, "If you seek a pleasant peninsula, look about you."

Lake Superior is vast, and always cold. The shores are rocky. Its wild, careless beauty is easy to fall in love with, and it does not care that you are there.

Music: Megan Dixon Hood "Drown"