In the distance, the Irvin's horn    
by Lynn Pattison 

             
He knew them by the horns
that sounded their positions, heavy

with ore or cement, stone or grain,
long and low in the water. The Cort,

the Boardman, the Mina—
From bed he can't see them anymore

and he can feel the terrain's                                         
hold on him start to loosen. 

Can't see much ahead he wants.
 

He loved the freighters

that lumbered and scraped
through the locks, marveled at the wall

of water a boat's bow could push
before it.  The Fitzgerald, before

she was lost. The Tregurtha,
biggest of the stern-enders.

He was there when they retired
the Valley Camp, knew how the Bradley

had broken her back and foundered
in the storm of '58.  In winter

he'd walk to watch the Mackinaw churn 
out to break lake ice, then tramp home

to shovel canyons deep as locks, tunnels 
to curb and garage.  He logged

each stage of work as they dug
the Mac Arthur, and later the Poe,

for the "thousand-footers,"
loaded with taconite or limestone.

He'd seen the river's every mood
and color, fished the shallows,

barely racing squalls to shore
with his sons—heads back, laughing.

Nine decades of mournful calls
out of fog and night, from up river

or down.  Like the freighter that turns
to breast an impossible wave, 

he looks head-on into the storm's sweep,                      
gazes north, does not retreat.

 

Lynn Pattison divides her time between her home in southwest Michigan and her place on the Pigeon River in the North. Her favorite part of the Michigan/Canadian border is the North Channel. Her work has appeared in The Notre Dame Review, Harpur Palate, and Pinyon Poetry.