Miracle in the Museum of Iron Industry - after Auden.
About rusting they were never wrong,
our deep-shaft miners: how well they knew
the holy mystery of oxidization; how it must take place
in the permanent exhibition’s swarm of long-beaked pick-axes
preserved like feeding mosquitoes, rust corroding each iron proboscis
(only the Curator doesn’t know) where it pierces the faux-rock wall;
or the crowbar rusting in the mannequin’s tireless grip, prying
more imaginary ore from the roof of the humid, recreated drift
— how, even as our own devout mothers idle in the stormy
confessional of the Brushless-Touchless Car Wash
as the rocker-washer regathers its dripping bowels for a final
underbody pass of Rust Inhibitor — how even then
there must always be a boy reinventing the wheel, a girl feeding
nails to a chirping nest of open-mouthed jars, each crucible
translucent, half-filled with kerosene, vinegar, Diet Pepsi,
Palmolive, milk, urine — “she’ll never lose her love for cooking, that girl”
but few will understand her search for God: Rust, the Secret Recipe by which
one substance alchemically becomes another, that dreadful Rorschach
she saw once, in A Child’s Big Book of Bible Stories, Illustrated —
the Stranger's secret identity revealed by his hands, palms up: red holes
eternally unhealed. For every father buying Rustoleum,
for every martyr with his finger in the dam,
there’s a girl like her, with her pocketknife in the family’s rusting fender,
widening the wound — for Curiosity? for chrisssake!
Catching iron flakes in the cup of her upraised palm.
Even in Brueghel’s painting of Icarus: how well we ignored the Descent itself,
as if the child would merely drop into an entry-level position in the mines.
Beneath the flaking pigment, x-rays of Icarus reveal an earlier failure:
Still Life with Hard Hat, some fatally-dented relic from the fall.
Otherwise, the paintings are the same: undulating sea, umber field,
the distant oredocks, the gaunt, omniscient eagle with a fishhook rusting in its beak.
We swore we heard the distant rumble of failure, or was it the armbones
of an angel flapping even as the final feather loosened...?
None of your damn business! the mine foreman warned the guy who pointed,
so we kept our eyes averted, and rot — because we failed to stop
when the first shoe dropped — rot found a nailhole in the hoof,
a weak spot in the tunnel roof. My god is dark, Rilke thought.
Then the horse fell lame; it thundered hard. Whatever we were ignoring
grew larger, approaching. Like a raindrop.
Fata Morgana Effect.
Se mirer! So silvered sunlight puddles, mercurial, along our frozen shoreline and lifts the Presque Isle cliffs, and twists poor little Sugar Loaf into Gibraltar, whereas Shot Point falters, inverted, a tugged taffy twin of itself, slim mirror hung in midmorning sun. Granite Island's lighthouse sprouting a brilliant spire, likewise — imagine seeing seeds grow in slow motion, rocks unfurling into air steeples, dunes steepened to palisades. Tour magique lumineux! And meanwhile an oreboat, taconite bloated, doubt heavy, plows south on a shimmering horizon where, phénomènes supérieurs, no amount of blinking can keep it from hovering a few feet above the waves.
Anaphylactic Effect.
"Wwwrrrgg, wroooooog, wrrrrrsp!" cries the old man to a buzzing wilderness of jackpine and black spruce, through swelling lips and closing throat, his pinwheel-silhouette swatting air where he stands a backlit moment in the cabin doorway, one arm still clutching that infant-sized chunk of birch he'd meant to split, the birch he'd propped on an old stump and axe-thwunked hard, once — before the prop-stump cracked open under his blow, below, hollow and buzzing, and every ground-wasp god-ever-made poured furious from that moss-lipped hole to meet their maker.
At Edisen Fishery, we find racks for drying nets that no longer get wet,
a dory split open along the keel like a gutted herring, upended in sun,
and cork floats no longer flung at dawn, with prayers for safe return, over water.
Old boathouses dot the craggy shorelines, sagging middles
broken by snow or cedars, toppling in slow motion to meet their reflections.
They know in their waterlogged bones where they'll retire: deep water.
When the National Park was created, landowners had a choice:
sell outright, or put the island in the name of the youngest. Men hired lawyers,
children became life-leasees, women signed their names in salt-water.
children became life-leasees, women signed their names in salt-water.
After a boat sinks, don't you think certain men dream of resurrecting it
— diving down to work the nets again? Some cabins were removed,
— diving down to work the nets again? Some cabins were removed,
resorts burned — sleeping cabins rafted away like wood-smoke on water.
Maybe the mailboat will never return. Who'd notice? But it used to be an event:
Mail! In old photographs, everyone's still crowded at the dock, anxious
for parcels, letters, news. The Voyageur carves a terrible wake in dark water
when it finally arrives — my canoe nearly capsizes with excitement!
She swallows my postcards and steams off, unsatisfied. These islands are dotted
with objects that once served Purpose: saws for cutting frozen lakewater,
with objects that once served Purpose: saws for cutting frozen lakewater,
ornate iceboxes, kitchen cupboards populated by antique flour-sifters,
pie-crust crimpers, heat-diffusers, cast-iron griddles, "refrigerators" of chicken wire
where milk and eggs cooled naturally, a fresh breeze lifting from icy water.
where milk and eggs cooled naturally, a fresh breeze lifting from icy water.
A few faithful apple trees keep dropping apples — but who remains
to make windfall pie? We search the shore for rusty lanterns, shards of china,
to make windfall pie? We search the shore for rusty lanterns, shards of china,
wave-licked bedsprings. Didn't we save these cabins among rocks and water
to remind us of our place in the world? Didn't we each sign a life-lease?
All things serve until broken: bins with their names stamped in tin, Flour,
Sugar, Coffee, Tea, Grease — even grease! — and a clean bucket named Water.
Sugar, Coffee, Tea, Grease — even grease! — and a clean bucket named Water.
My father, still farming, fears retirement. What would I do? he demands —
What would I do? He's spent his life milking cows, sharpening plows, baling hay.
Now he shakes his head, stares out over hayfields as if they were dangerous waters
where a terrible cruise ship full of lounge chairs will arrive, and force him to board.
The Voyageur carries passengers and letters sent c/o life-leasees, but rarely does it check
this harbor for outgoing mail. Spiders string nets under the maildock, at the waterline.
This urge to remain in Lake Superior, forever — who can deny it? O give us chores,
let us stand a few harsh decades more, a cabin braving every storm until thy aspen's
lease be gnawed down by beavers, dragged by God's own teeth into blessed water.
"Kathleen M. Heideman will be a 2011 resident fellow of the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation. She is the former Developer of Online Learning at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, and a recent fellow of the National Science Foundation's Artists & Writers Program on Antarctica. In 2010, Heideman served as writer-in-residence with the Andrews Experimental Forest (OR), Aspen Guard Station in San Juan National Forest (CO), and artist-in-residence at Necedah National Wildlife Refuge (WI) and Badlands National Park (SD). Her poem "Overlooked Heroine, Landscape with the Fall of Icarus" was recently nominated by editors of decomP for a 2010 Pushcart Prize. A resident of Upper Michigan, she gladly suffers wanderlust. And she digresses..."