CRYSTAL FALLS

Morning mist over the lake
          the frosty breath of the northwoods
          rolling like a sigh over the water
          chilled and quiescent, eagles overhead
gliding in curlique patterns
over the treetops, the birches

as tall and trim as totems, their ashen trunks
          staunchly defying Canadian winds.
          Only the drone of motorboats
          squander the stillness, fishermen,
poles in hand, heave lines into the snapping air,
eyes fixed on the water, their minds

clear as the sky, wait patiently for the kiss
          of northern pike upon their lures.
          To the west, faintly, like a
           growling stomach, storm clouds
gather and groan, delineating one more chapter
in the saga of  Crystal Falls.

STEEL MAN

He was a man of steel
                my father

Thirty-nine years pouched in the searing belly
                of the thirty-six inch plate mill

an acrid finger poking from the shore of Lake Michigan
                in an act of brazen defiance

For four decades he endured
                the blistering breath of white hot ingots

as they slithered through the mill
                performing their reptilian undulations

of semi-liquid menace
                with temperatures so intense

it felt like your skin was charring
                and your bones were melting like so much wax

Every day his lungs filled with iron ore dust
                as dense as the canopy of fog

hanging over the predawn lake
                and every week a different shift

scrambled his circadian rhythms
                until night and day lost their identities

causing my brother and I to live in dread
                of waking him in the middle of the afternoon

when the unforgiving night shift
                cheated him of valued rest

For thirty years he carried a scar
                on his right leg, a permanent memento

he often joked about as if it were a mere insect bite                
                before admitting to my brother and I

right after his retirement that an errant crane
                had nearly cost him a limb

Now the mill is cold and deserted
                an oxidized corpse on the bank of Lake Michigan

and as if their fates were forever bound and dissoluble
                they have both succumbed to nature’s forces

the cold, unflinching mill
                and that indefatigable man of steel
                                                                      my father

WE ARE GOLDEN

Like the early morning sky
glistening in my eye
          we are golden

Like the sun’s midday hue
I am blind without you
          ‘cause we’re golden

Like the glaze that paints day’s end
it’s the radiance you send
          for we are golden

MEMORY LAPSE

I don’t remember leaving the womb
nor do I recall leaving your heart;
yet one was my birth,
the other my death

SPRING TEASE

March can be such a tease…

          If it were a woman
          her aqueous tongue would be
          flitting along my neck like an ant
          tracking a trail of sugar,
          while her hand slithered
          toward my male vulnerability

          And when I would attempt to reciprocate,
          she would curl just out of reach,
          disinterested in the very emotions
          she stirred in the recesses of my gut.

          April, on the other hand--
          ah…April,

          Now there is a month that will go
          all the way.

BULLSHIT & DREAMS

There is a fine filament
between bullshit and dreams
that separates triumph from despair,
reality from fable

For what is bullshit
but dreams led astray,
deluded by fraudulent aspirations,
corrupted by fallacious reasoning

Dreams symbolize the purest of hopes
as yet unstained by the virus
of bullshit that mocks and erodes
and revels in failure

Bullshit is too often
the temptress that lures the innocent
into unsavory scenarios gilded
with grandiose promises of glory and riches

So we must, like adroit tightrope walkers,
negotiate that microscopic filament,
for history is replete with forlorn tales
of those who lost their balance

between
bullshit and dreams