It’s Always Too Late
Lynn Domina
I
Like all people everywhere, we anticipate disaster,
debating iron’s worth, or silver’s, or the meaning of history.
Ancestors descend shafts to drill for our copper.
When everyone’s dead, does it matter which labor
was most dangerous: mining, logging, war. We chafe at drudgery
like all people everywhere. We anticipate disaster.
A crumbling newspaper describes a maimed man’s terror
witnessing his partner’s spurting blood, his futile bravery.
Ancestors descend shafts to drill for our copper.
At least today we no longer drive mules to strain harder.
Iron ore ships to Cleveland and copper goes by rail to Sudbury.
Either way, like all people everywhere, we anticipate disaster.
Believe it when you hear widow-maker. One replaceable miner
died every week, through explosion, cave-in, some boss’s treachery.
Ancestors descend shafts to drill for our copper.
In retrospect any decision could assure error
or seem prescient. We’re alive for now to be some child’s memory.
Like all people everywhere, we anticipate disaster.
Ancestors descend shafts to drill for our copper.
II
Tonight every ship is seeking safe harbor
in Duluth, Marquette, Sault Ste. Marie, Thunder Bay.
Ashore, each year’s bitter wind feels sharper.
Deckhands envision fractures, loose bolts, weak solder.
Captains know it’s always too late to pray.
Tonight every ship is seeking safe harbor.
In October we track each laker’s lights, the sky dark early, then darker.
We measure wave height, gale force as dawn swerves to day.
Ashore, each year’s bitter wind feels sharper.
Dropping off coal or taking on iron, ore boats clamor
with tonnage. Loading sounds frenzied, a shuddering display.
Tonight every ship is seeking safe harbor.
In November we commemorate the last ship sunk on Superior
whose wind-swept surf taunts: drowned men sink away, away, away.
Ashore, each year’s bitter wind feels sharper.
Come January, shipping season’s closed. Our terror
relaxes to awe at winter’s beauty, power, its fierce elegant array.
Tonight every ship is seeking safe harbor.
Ashore, each year’s bitter wind feels sharper.
Lynn Domina is the author of three full-length collections of poetry, Inland Sea, Corporal Works, and Framed in Silence, and one chapbook, Killing Him. Her more recent work appears or is forthcoming in Ninth Letter, the museum of americana, About Place, and other periodicals. She serves as Poetry Editor of Vita Poetica and Book Reviews Editor of EcoTheo Review, and she currently lives in Marquette, Michigan, along the beautiful shore of Lake Superior.