Travel Songs

Mirror Lake
         –after Whitman


The faint muse of the sun, early October morning
over Mirror Lake,
the squirrels in the forest dim and low volume,
walnuts fallen to the ground in broken shells
re-seeding themselves, saying thank you,
re-seeding the world anew reaching for no fame.
Here is where the world
of the Winnebagos, the Ho Chunk, the thousands
of peoples of the unknown races once roamed
in oaken dugouts carved by tribal elders,
paddled around the unglaciated
plates and dunes of sandstone...at Echo Rock,
they bore paddle down into shallow water
where the Pike fish once lay offspring, silver streaks
against gnarled rocks; and eagles sprang
from pine needle lily pad bog.
To this, the midwest is like All other.
To this, we, skipping from smooth beach under
a faint sun, looking onto the shoreline
which holds old Echo Rock, old Cambrian guard
of all the other shore-world in its microcosm,
we, by air, jumped, from grass, over water,
to rise up into the past,
and sent our thoughts
into a land carved by ancestors.