The train engine begins
and the freight cars jerk
in the couplings
risk the lives of workers between.
Wheels holding the weight
glide over the lines of sun toward
uncertain futures.
Old rocks speak in grandfathers’ tongues
of workers’ strife, gun and knife.
Some gandy-dancer riding the rails
between here and the harbor
put a spike in the wrong place —
forgot to throw the switch
by accident or spite.
Companies pushed Indians aside
gave scrip for land
kept the mineral rights
dealt in boardrooms
during the strikes
recruited more immigrants
only to lock them out.
Workers with miner’s lung
carried the weight.
The companies armed the Pinkertons.
So many trades —
from Stone to Charlemagne Tower
from the Merritt Brothers
who lost their claim to Carnegie —
the Iron Range spawned the big cities.
The first road
for the gold rush that went bust,
for the iron used up.
Now copper whispers.
In the underground mine
pumps still run
down the long elevator where
men strode into the dark
with carbide lamps
into perpetual damp 52 degrees,
crawled into tunnels with timbers groaning
carried dynamite caps.
Outside, by the tracks
a fence has fallen into the weeds
the sign face down on the ground —
Blasting. Keep Out.
Now is the same as then —
men divided and women spent.
Some words don’t translate.
A brakeman empties his bottle
and pits fill with water
the old ones wait for the next disaster.
A whistle blows long and low.
Sun flashes on all the lakes
as the train gains speed.

A spark was struck
by the iron of this earth
that drives the factories and mines
and laid those tracks that deliver us
to the fronts. Fire roars
in the furnaces, a spark flings
into the dark. We drive it.
Iron’s been launched and shot
from bows. Iron has made rifles
then cannons and tanks
has been delivered by planes
in terrible beauty
etched itself into stones
and memory.
Iron has been lit by clouds
from the collision of fronts
travelled on roads
in bones and nerve-endings
burned with lust and fury.
Iron has driven armies
moved with flanks
turned the motors and wheels
scarred the trunks
swallowed the forests
climbed inside the bodies
buried by ash.
Iron bleeds with rust.
It comes with its own rules.
Of its tools, I count the hinges
and knobs and latches and pots.
No one has walked upon ground
where iron hasn’t been.
Beware, those who sleep nearby
those who have borne scars
the creations and destructions
those with that rage
those with those dreams.

In 1916, in Biwabik during the strike
an accident happened
when the company’s guards
visited the house of Philip Masonovich.
Some said it was over a drink
but that’s not what others think.
A blind pig was implicated —
a family who took in a boarder.
A grudge unsettled them
a strike at fever pitch.
It began underground where
the intestinal rivers wound
through mineral maps.
It began in extraction of the geomagnetic
fields in the Canadian Shield
with the mining of ores taken for steel
paving the continent
with bridges and tracks. It began
in locations, in mines
where money drained from the pockets
and the hires carried dynamite caps.
It began with fires burning
behind clouds of smoke, the false night
among the silhouettes,
filters turning yellow and wet.
Some coughed in unison and spoke
in foreign tongues, in code.
Some were liars.
Thick ores and clay and blood
mix in crush wounds and miner’s lung.
It began in thin pay envelopes.
A bullet found its way out of the gun
but the aim was wrong.
One man was gone.
There were some who broke the rules
and there were stools.
Women couldn’t remove the stains —
they buried the remains
but the work went on.
A woman and infant were detained in the local jail.
Wobblies on another road miles away
were arrested for inciting to riot
put on trial.
Some votes were lost — some were won.
A hundred years went by.

If moon, then only crescents
continuous rough music
of verb and noun
to shine that road upon the lake
trouble the tongue —
keep sonorous secrets.
In the distillery
underground,
work to make ruinous
beauty. In imaging
pare it down, find the essence.
Work double duty
to intoxicate, delete and deliberate
expand the seams
increase the proof
stay aloof.
In the condensery
turn up the heat
on the copper tubing
harness the steam.
Pour out both heads and tails
drink wild gleams.
Burial Mounds and Old Mines
In the shimmer of violet rain
along old paths
of a thousand years, along Esquagama —
crows look right and left
into roots that run into old blood
deep in the earth’s repository.
Ancestor bundles were taken up
by the tribes
and moved to this site with other bones —
we don’t know why.
Glaciers have gone into the sky.
Women had consequence.
A thousand years of rain
make a high banter with the crowns
of trees while the earth swallows flint
clay vessels and copper implements.
A thousand years of excavating
and we are paid in pebbles.
Rain comes down like a sigh.
Arrows are pulled from the targets.
Our wars, our burdens are many,
we wait for discovery
in the sound of rain falling on folded leaves
in the silence
before the forest and after the forest is gone.
A fish jumps at the wings of insects.
Birds swoop.

i.
Come into the car
look into the dark with me.
In the knitting
I was cast on or was my yarn
on my grandmother’s sticks
in vein-lined hands
stitch after stitch
and a few of those dropped.
Now a hole runs deep.
I carry the loop
of invisible ores
whispering at night
flights of bats
wind in the tunnels and farther
in the seep of water.

ii.
The click-click never ends.
Do you notice while knitting
that progress is unraveling?
Tipsy, motion sick, sleepy
I extend the garment
invite you to try on the vowels
give you this edge
lift the smell of hot pine needles
and their roots
as the bank of the river dissolves
takes mud to the sea
murmurs through the night
to bring the long horizon
the sunlight.
I remember the sound
of waves against the boat
arriving, departing, passing beneath
the glance of custom officers
who stamped a seal on my passport.
Over the border and back
exhaling —
a note sung out, hummed
flung out like seed in its case
buried and broken and stitched
by the earth who feeds us with rain.
Inside the minerals rise.
The plant grows a root, a tendril
some sort of mercy.

iii.
The hawks kettle
above the crowns of timber
taken down.
I mourn for their height
sing, hold the winged
moment of shade
to send ahead
say all the syllables are
ours — all the lost
lonely in the dark
rustlings
breakings, the violence
never meant or done on purpose
short-sighted, mean
steam shoveled
done with an instrument,
all that we buried in silence.
I sing of the new lands
the rooms they built
dreams that opened.
Of those I am speaking.
To my grand-daughters
and sons, the grandest
beginning, I bless
even the unresolved claims
the stripped and foreclosed —
all things do change.

iv.
My grandmother took in the sunset.
I speak in her crimson —
tip the glass.
She always gave with a warm hand
boiled the sap of the trees
for pancakes at the table
at sunrise collected
from the chickens’ squawks
a basket of eggs
warm from brooding.
Inside the nests are broken shells
little twigs, feathers given.
She washed the warm eggs
and broke them into the frying pan.
Marigold yolks, some doubled
served with salt and pepper
and a slab of bread
toasted in the skillet
sticky with honey.

v.
I tip the glass.
From the center
from flood and wind
I pour from my grandfather’s bottle —
from the accordion
his only luggage —
from the center of fire or star
essential spark of ancestors
that gleams in the eye,
I pour.

vi.
It is late but not for you.
Let’s drink to never again.
Refill the cups.
No went on and became yes
what came after is anyone’s guess.
Here’s to hope
you will bring your warm hand too.
I depend upon it
pour my love and the mothers’
before, give every stitch
of warmth to the cold.
Take heart, the chained heart
the foreign, added-on heart,
the singing of a bird.
Listen to the knitting of the invisible
ores whispering at night,
winged flights, listen
to the wind in the trees
and farther, listen —
love’s pouring clear like water.

I woke as if on a dark
platform, everything departed.
Raining in the windows
into my sleep
stars or moon or mist,
revolving.
I’ve travelled far,
the train erases its tracks.
It is not as if I did not know this —
away
is a drifting continent
stone of an iron mountain.
I turn toward it
as if my body were all voices
silenced and listening to the dark.
In the beginning
separation
day from night and water from sky
now me
the way of all things.
The hands are feathers
now
they can not grasp or hold
anything but wind.

I go back to the girl
her blades on black ice
crossing visible cracks
fractures fused by zero
on the December lake
over fish in descending currents
silver and precise.
She warms up
the dance
is turn and reverse
intoxication and chance.
She’s carving the surface
with hardly a glance
racing from shore
to lift when she leaps —
land without weight —
releasing the pain in her feet
almost blue.
Exertion or fate?
Drowning near
the place she broke through.

All winter, as I kindled the fire
my body burned days on end
not sexual but acrid
at the stake
the little girl kept by her father
at the table
to finish her dinner,
my adolescent selves,
the wives I was, a conflagration,
my own immolation of the past.
At the end, I turned into charcoal,
a bear, and burned even brighter
as I carried my ash to the icy road.
All winter back and forth
I spoke with the tongues of flames.
At night I tied myself
to the sound of breathing,
the waves of in- and exhalation,
pulled up my boat on an empty shore.
In mornings when the world
came back, I floated
upon the surface of light,
resurrected and lost my self
to the waters, in vapor
and ice and free.
Then noise surged — trees felled
tunnels bored through the iron mountain
my body, bull-dozed.
Ache — just another word for gravity
stone crags, granite faces
ledges lifted by glaciers
that came and left, carried by trains
iron strip-mined.
I was weathered and worn
by the rivers that sprung
from underground
with eruptions and slides
floods, quakes, lightning strikes
made into shadow, eclipsed.
I have been travelling
in four directions
borne into the hands
of those doing menial work.
I take this life
to give to the wind, my breath —
with the strings of an instrument
give to the flames, give to the water
give to the earth.

I come to the poise
of an empty day —
after winter and before new leaf —
nothing you can see
in the north at equinox
in the trees when sap rises
and wings are passing over
no berries yet, nor needs.
The water climbs
over ice-capped rocks
and waits.

In the still frozen mud
frogs, who could have been taken
for dead, jump-start their hearts.

Off the road
where maps of lichen and thick moss
take in minerals
beneath the balsam
over the border
past the landing
in the stone face of granite
above the water’s mirror
in a boat I ride by small islands
where root dives into stone
amid broken limbs of white pine
behind the reflection of day
into dark endings
reach for my own reaching
hand in the cold water
of October — for a tail flick of a fin
among the sunken shoulders
in a vein of ore.
To take from another body
is a question
answered by loon
or by the morning rime
with weasel
searching the char of a cold fire.
After the urgent
animal of the body —
we rose to a heavy frost
and the moose that trod
over our path
running, hunted.

Find Labrador Tea
collect lichen
from the granite face of midnight
and pick up the soot of fallen stars.
Sharpen bones
with a rusty file and make claws
out of memory.
Run short of supplies
make do with twine
and pieces of burnt driftwood
whisper a prayer and a curse.
Try rivers.
Willow roots to tie in knots.
Hazelnuts. Dandelion wine made by aunts.
Read an old map — several miles lost.
Add Fool’s Gold
hair clippings and nightmares.
Cross the howls of the wolves
with trees falling
in splintering thuds.
Take the wail of a train and its wake.
Old hollows. Hot tar. Lady-slippers.
Neither compass nor level
but blood and breath.
Whatever else.
Wear ice. Chant. Sacrifice.

Crows rise in glossy coats
grasp shadows when they land
clasp hands behind their backs
consider the ground where we walk —
it isn’t sound, they decide
and fly to another place nearby.
They circulate in the dappled light
gather wind into their bodies and eyes
travel along the highway
shift and jostle one another
inspecting bits of gravel —
if it can be found, crows will find it —
they’re appalled at all the broken things
and pleased by rings.
In the rain, they cry with indignation
cannot bring themselves to any unity
cannot become a choir, cannot settle.
They know exactly what they need.

I return but it’s all excavation — me
an employee of the organization.
I remember a long road past a gate,
a dead landscape.
Dust. Noise. First the Crusher and then
where I worked, the Agglomerator
with conveyors to the trains.
First stop, the dry.
A sink like a Roman fountain.
Clothes blackened by taconite, yellow and white
hard hats, coveralls, steel toed boots,
safety glasses, the whistle
starting and stopping each shift.
For this, I propped myself on a ledge
for the paycheck.
Steel beams, high voltage. Dripping grease.
One of the crew leaning on a high pressure
water hose, blowing dust out of my nose
into a handkerchief, pushing spillage
down the sloping concrete floors
below rolling furnaces,
swallowing salt tablets from dispensers.
On a swing shift, counting
days till the long weekend
taking smoke breaks, and calculating
what falling asleep on graveyards might cost.
All night and day, the trains came to load
at the ore docks.
In the lunchroom, I took from my lunch pail
a paperback. Kept myself awake
with coffee from my thermos
avoided pellets and their third degree burns
stared into the middle distance
not the ends but the means —
working below the surface.

Iron. Two notes
travelling and landing
on shore and wind-carved edge.
To carry and drop, on rusted

mesh, hunger and freight.
Ingress and egress with railing
between stories — ascents, exits —
threshold, escape.

Some blame can’t be escaped
for the fire.
It happened — didn’t it?
Or not just that year.
It was careless. There is no excuse.
It could have happened to anybody.
It depends on the angle and intensity.
Did I say velocity?
I can’t get rid of the smell of smoke.
This changes nothing or everything.
It’s too late for never.
The shadow unfolds with its light.
Crowns lit crowns
ahead of me. Behind char and bones.
Ghosts flee.
I went on. It wasn’t me
or it was a shadow.
It fills the space that I fall through.

In the sauna, I remember
water pouring from the bucket
to the floor.
The water remembers
vapor and ice.
The walls remember the sap
that rose in the spring.
The wooden ladle
remembers the drawknife and vise
drops of blood spilled along its lines
and calloused hands that carved
the body of the tree.
The hands remember
the hard palms of his father
all those nights working by the fire.
And his father remembers
the draft horse pulling the logs
that remember the height of the white pine
that remembers the earth
before it was fallen.
The stone remembers the blow
that broke it from the mother stone
and bones remember the blood
that spilled
into the roots underground
The nails remember the iron.
The fire remembers the ancient forge
the heat, the heat.

Nothing to say —
they slept and woke and walked
distant theories.
Before sunrise she boiled the coffee
and poured it through a silver
strainer. When they drank
they both looked away.
The star in the shoulder
of Orion
in gravitational collapse
a violent stellar wind too far
to feel even a breath.
He looked toward the barn
and she with one hand in her lap
looked at the dog
waiting for a scrap.
On the counter, the tin
of coffee from the Co-op
the Red Star brand
with its hammer and sickle crossed —
one to drive the nails
into the boards planed
from the logs they cut
and one to cut the grain
that swayed in the summer fields
to take to the mill.
Equal shares in hopes
and their demise.
The Northern Electric Association
connected them to the grid.
She made eggs and toast
and wild strawberry jam.
He went out to milk the cows
and she churned butter.
When he came in at dusk
everything was on the table.
He ate and went to the shop to fix
the red Farm-all H tractor.
Pigs had the slop.
The coffee tin rusted
holding old nails
the distant star above the earth
imploding, exploding
hydrogen to helium to iron
burning through the elements —
or giving birth.

i.
My grandfather leads Belgians
into the bright sun of the last century.
They clop to the barn door
squinting like immigrants, a smell
of hay and manure and dust
from their chestnut flanks.
The shod hooves strike the blue slate
under foot and give off stars.
They lower their heads
for the door is not their height.
Muscles roll beneath their brown coats.
They cross over the threshold.

ii.
My father grows up in two languages
between his parents’ claims.
Leather harness, reins, the silver rings jingle.
The Belgians whinny for a bag of oats.
Their weight shifts.
My grandmother turns from the sight
from the window that catches the sunset
with its fire, in the same house that burns down
on the foundation that will remain
and one lone timber holding up the sky
the same timber the bird chooses for her nest.
My grandmother pulled back
her skirts, kept the children inside.
She’s taken her breath away
from his shoulder and throat,
the endless schemes to trade this and that
and now the horses for a gold watch.
She holds her tongue
the air as cold as the potato cellar
as cold as the bottom of the swamp
as the peat beneath the trees
as the St. Louis River that winds
through the homestead and its snow drifts.
Her quilt wears down to fragile threads.

My father plows two fields.
My grandmother hears the Belgians neigh
sees the shadow of an old man
dragged by their shadows. Nights come.

I remember the long traces —
the hame on the collar
that hung on the barn wall
the weathered boards of the cart,
my sister on the back
of two kinds of knowledge.
My mother sings the songs her mother sang
and spins the wheel.
The bird weaves the nest with twigs
and bits of yarn,
shells crack open
and two young ones fledge —
to circle and soon, migrate.

Celebrate bitter things
after long winter
rhubarbs’ red green stalks
and partial sun
shared with cutworm and fly
and ants that come —
no house can resist their arrival.
Life’s too much or not enough —
savor the undernote of butter.
Smile in dandelions’ faces
after the rabbits take other blossoms.
Taste from the plate I’ve heaped
tart rhubarb
ripe strawberries and sugar.

Far from home
my father stopped our car
and my mother paused in her talking.
On the shoulder of the empty stretch
was a lone woman walking.
The neighbor —
neither parent registered surprise.
No houses nearby, no way to a telephone.
She wiped her eyes.
The edges of her light coat were flapping.
She climbed in the back seat
next to me, bringing in cold drafts.
Her husband told her to get out
she said. He drove on without her.
Not the first time. I watched the ditch.
Nothing more was said. I could see
in the rearview mirror, an afterthought
in my father’s glance.
We travelled along in silence,
except for the radio singing.
I listened to the tires’ rhythm
on the cracks of the tarmac.
At her driveway, I heard my father’s question:
Is this where she wanted to be dropped off?
She pulled the door latch, thanked him.
Later, her husband mentioned the incident
if she wasn’t so stubborn — he apologized
while he clenched, unclenched his work hands.
It’s all right now, she said. My mother
added, if you ever need anything
just come right over, don’t bother calling.

Along a deserted road, at the edge
of October
a grouse between shadow and light arrives
with tentative steps —
as if to say to fox or wolf or husband with a gun:
I’ve come this far — has it all been a waste?
In his sights the bird
bolts into flight.

She burns with a fury
her blood turned to shower
of star —
in the atmosphere, cast out in high wind
burning in the late hour
night fire — red leaf.
When she returns in the hollow of throat
on each anniversary,
bring ash to the ceremony.
Grief burns in the lung
in the songs they sung.
In memory, I light her with my tongue.

The bear walks over ores
through the ring
of ice and Northern Lights.
A wind from two worlds blows.
I can smell the fire in her sauna stove.
She hands me the switch
birch striplings tied in a bundle.
They’ve just come to leaf.
She gives me a bear’s tooth.
She works at a loom
weaving the steel wire
unwound from a mineral skein.
The meridian moves when she moves.
Swaying in the heat,
I drink cold from the Big Dipper.
She steadies the handle.
One hand, calloused, grips like iron
and the other stirs the atmosphere.
She’s made from oils and canvas,
split screens and names that extend
from the landscape.
Inside she is deep crimson and violet.
A rose blooms from a vein of blood
that travels through dark mud underground
and comes up in the sun.
Water boils into steam and the stones speak.
Her incantations come.

Outside the plant, sisters grin,
their hair rolled and pinned.
They wear work clothes
and the lids of their welding shields
are lifted. It’s day shift.
Production is up.
The safety goggles gleam
slightly steamed in the sun —
as if they were just called away
from the acetylene torch
and the hot flame of rage
that makes unbreakable seams.
In the plants and shipyards
women just like these
man the supply lines fully capable
with the air of Amelia Earharts.
Their feet on the ground in Canton, Ohio
at the Spun Steel Corporation
are solid. Nobody could shove them aside.
Their bodies even dreams are weighted
by heavy aprons and gloves and high boots.
When they go home, they’ll sit on the porch
drink a beer, wait for the men
to arrive — to dote on babies — keep score
of baseball games broadcast on the radio.
After work, they wash the grime
off their necks and clean their nails
and though it isn’t polite
hawk the dust from their throats.

Dead people’s clothes
Aunt Grace brought from the nursing home.
The box flaps lifted as if she carried live souls.
Perfectly good, she said, but with
the whiff of medicine and toilets.
For the children, Grace gestured,
for dress up. But pretend wasn’t like that.
It was chaps and holsters and cowboy hats.
Aunt Martha took apart the men’s suits
with her seam ripper, to music.
She had been at the sanitarium for TB
pictured in a room full of iron beds
and sessions in the cold fresh air
wrapped in wool blankets
with those were her dearest friends —
a woman named Ricky
who never married and some
who didn’t make it. Ricky sent
another photo later, after they had been
released, posed with a hunting rifle.
She never had a child.
It’s just her way, Martha said. I tucked it
inside my head. There were women who
were like men, and there were women like
Martha who hummed and cut
with her shears, added darts, pressed with steam
basted the seams. Sewed the men’s wear
on her Singer sewing machine —
she used a tie and a shirt
the same pockets
and buttons and zippers and cuffs
but gave it a skirt.

I haul in with the freighters
glide beneath the aerial bridge
fall into the red grains of sand
walk with the migrating cranes
follow the hawks
rise from the wind
drive the waves into shore
break the breakers along the ledge
explode the light
push back the smoke of chimneys
press against the trains as they come
to the ore docks and back to the mines
and return to the inland sea
follow the creek from its mouth
through the culvert, up the slope
beneath the motors storming
on the freeway, scatter the trash
dishevel the Rose Garden
below the lifting flocks of birds
over young mothers with strollers
stir the dogs by the bookstore
drill with the dentist
cook with the chefs of Burrito Union
on Fourth Street
as the river goes deep
and descending
climb the iron foot-bridge
find the path along the precipice
tip the old cedar
follow the homeless
and student and middle-aged
streets that merge into the city
glimmer in the crowns
of old white pines
find my way under bridges
to the pileated woodpecker
shine in the city lights
over the roofs, to the monastery
and university into the sky
and down again
sway with erotic dancers
and sleep with the dead in the mortuary
come through tar and feathers
and terrible fatalities
wars and old age
read my names on the stones
speak to the owls
wander through alleys past kitchen windows
where women break eggs into pans
bring the children home
make the dogs bark
exhale with babies breath and ferns
in the cases of the florists
shine through diamonds and gold
of the jewelers
through the brokenness at the shelters
in the paper plants
in the picketers at the clinic
in the liquor stores
fall through the heat of summer
and winter’s snow drifts
gleam like the candles in restaurants
in neon messages, in casino slots
in shops and banks
and tail-lights of the buses
rise in the scent of sesame oil
and peapods through jasmine tea
and sushami
fresh ground coffee
Italian sausage through fennel seed
and crust of bread and slice of cheese
clatter in silverware
rise through the smokers of fish
and in the barbecue
through the brewery
spill as foam over the brim
echo through the voices
the heels on the bricks
ferment and pour into
the smudged goblets
come to those in debt
in Emergency and Intensive Care
map the body’s breath
sweep along the floor
of barbers and barkeeps and bachelors
waiters and Grandmothers for Peace
in chambers and markets and charts
of meteorologists
slumber in the jails
and bookstores
gamble with the lovers
newly met, and invest with
the patient, the irritated, separated
come to the first kiss
to silent exchanges and glances
to the crowning head in delivery, the cry
of the newborn’s father
burn in the tobacco
and fold in the newspapers
come through the vibration
of strings, through the clarinets
and brass, through the hands of musicians
through dark night
through long and sleepless trembling
through pain of needles and rehabilitations
over the bridge and under the bridge
through strokes of artists on blank canvas
through dark matter and despair
cold damp of the deepest mine
and hellish furnaces
through fevers and dreams
come through a seed
rise into stem and leaf
fall back to earth
come through the mist
rain down the lake
rise from the wind
drive waves into shore
break the breakers along the ledge
explode the light.

A stranger checked into a room
in the Tremont Hotel
at the end of the line
tipped the porter a token to lift
her portmanteau.
She arrived — no lady —
in a ruin of red brick
with a view. Bats came in
rodents hurried through chinks
in the walls, vandals
broke the window glass.
The mercury lights arrived
and fell through. Walls
starved down to ribs
and floors dropped beneath
the ceiling’s downslide.
Pipes went silent. Spiders watch.
She won’t lie. There’s been
a lot of traffic coming by.
Trades are not sweet.
Either people are blind
or she is invisible, light
as powder on the empty
bureau where she writes
with the tip of her finger.
Some pray, some get high
chase a train that has long
ago left the station.
With deep concentration
she climbs between sheets of rain.
The hinges of door creak
and the wind whispers
to the new moon
who will soon knock.

I’ll meet you here
on traces of the deep red ore
beneath our feet
where old growth and mineral rights
have been taken away.
I’ll meet you under the sky
on the Iron Range
where immigrants arrived
speaking other languages.
Workers lifted the corner stones into place
from Finland, Albuquerque, the desert,
from east and west
where bears walk and ores whisper.
I’ll meet you here among the pines
and thousand lakes
where I swam and drifted as a child
down the St. Louis River
that flowed beneath the bridges
on the Vermilion Trail.
In the magnetic North —
at the edge of the wild where mist rises
and eagles fly
over the Laurentian Divide
where our ancestors
received the rivers’ gifts —
to change — turn in a new direction — to flow
away from oceans we once called home.

A ship hangs on a thread
above the pews of a church
in Kalajoki
where my great-grandmother wed
where I’ve made passage
with a satchel
and handful of photographs.
The ship floats on the high notes
of hymns above the heads
and turns on the rising heat
where the pastor breaks bread.
The vessel left port
when she was young
went through the Baltic
into the Atlantic
but never arrived
in Newfoundland.
The names on the head-stones
in the churchyard
pass through my bones.
Oblivious of the foundered
not burdened by dread,
a child laughed
and ran from his mother.
She warned him
in the mother language
beneath the keel
shifting in the notes
played by the organ.
If in my grandfather’s lap
my mother sailed, and if I in hers —
what might be found
or run aground
on currents of song
of breath.

We light this candle
for those not here today
to thank them for the flame
the song and love in their eyes.

We strike this spark
in the depot
for our own arrivals and departures
for those travelling farther
and closer.

With the light of many others
we light this candle
send a wish nobody can extinguish.
The road to love becomes a map
that each of us must draw ourselves.

Birch bark
on my path this morning
after the summer rain along the sea.
A powdery, damp, torn flag
or scroll from the map
of unknown territories
without north, without a key.
From the mushroomed
floor, no mark of seed, root, or leaf.
Whatever was written, erased.
Torsos fallen, empty sleeves.
Outside, bleached as bone
inside, a rosy skin.
I took that scrap and nailed
to the wall
a silence I want to keep.

On a threshold
after felling of trees
by tree cutters, dozers, chains,
wind pulled the smoke
from the stacks
and men took off their caps
rubbed their forearms
over their faces and left
as sun and rain soothed
the pitch and stumps
and woke the buried cones
while diesel trucks delivered
the freight of reams
torn open in this room —
each empty sheet
a ground of seeds waking
from sleep.

Even after all the ink
and habitation of myself
as ash I’ll arrive
the dictate of wind.

After the whistle blew
we danced invisible circles
turning the wheel with our palms
around the clock
rolling on wheels beneath our feet.
We blew smoke to the clouds
met the dawn
drank beer from a case
until the sky turned silver
and sun reached the highest notes.
On the backroad
behind the mines we drove
around the horn.
Wind blew upon the mouthpiece
in morning glory
while we tossed the empties
into the ditch
and the day crew thrust
their shovels into the pit.
When we pressed on the gas
the valves of the car
matched the far sound of the plant.
Train cars loaded
to go to the harbor —
cross arms lowered to hold us back.
The train cars dumped at the ore docks.
Pellets rolled in the hold
below and the ship signalled
to the bridge and the bridge answered,
a fanfare for the working man.
Shadows danced
and the plants blew smoke to the clouds
until there was no ground.
Only a hole with the sound.

Flynn, Elizabeth Gurley. Rebel Girl: An Autobiography, My First Life (1906–1926). International Publishers. 2007. This was the source of “Not Just Bread.”

Gunn, Jennifer, PhD. “Compromising Positions.” Minnesota Medicine. September 2007. Web. Retrieved 12 October 2012. This was the source of “Medicine on the Iron Range.”

This work is based on women’s stories, labor history, immigration, mining, and geology of the Iron Range in Minnesota. Thank you to the Arrowhead Regional Arts Council and the McKnight Foundation for their kind support, past and present. Thank you to Minnesota writers Meridel LeSueur, Joseph Kalar, and Sigurd Olson. Thank you to Muriel Rukeyser, Tillie Olsen and many other writers. Along with personal family history, the archives of the Minnesota Historical Society and the Iron Range Resource Center in Chisholm, Minnesota and the rich repository of photographs and oral histories have inspired this work.

Sheila Packa, the granddaughter of Finnish immigrants, grew up near Biwabilk on the Iron Range. She has three books of poems and has edited an anthology of seventy-five Lake Superior regional writers. She has been a recipient of two Loft McKnight Fellowships, one in poetry and one in prose. She has also received fellowships and funding support for projects from the Arrowhead Regional Arts Council. She served as Duluth’s Poet Laureate 2010–2012. More information is available at www.sheilapacka. com.

The following poems have been published elsewhere: “My Geology,” “Strange Highway” in The Thunderbird Review, 2014; “North Star,” “Vestiges,” “Oliver Mine, WWII,” and “Medicine on the Iron Range” in Women’s Words (KUMD, Duluth, Summer 2013); “Vermilion Trail” in To Sing Along the Way (New Rivers Press, 2005); “Steam Song” in Mesaba Co-op Newsletter, 2014; “Two Timing” in The Heart of All That Is (Holy Cow! Press, 2013); “Keg Party” in Knockout Literary Magazine, Spring 2014; “Elements” and “Memory / The Mine” in Migrations (Wildwood River Press, 2012); “Tremont Hotel” in Radio Pluto gallery installation, Duluth, 2013; “Conjuring Bear” appeared as “Inventing a Bear” in Prøøf Magazine (2013); “Crows” in Write On Radio, KAXE (2013); “Boundary Waters” in Cortland Review (August 2013)

Several of these poems have been used in a multimedia and live performance “Night Train | Red Dust” at the Fringe Festival 2013 in Minneapolis. Wildwood River, a confluence of the arts, is a multimedia publishing platform