Crust of the Earth

Long ago someone went to work on this land.

Called out, kneading

the crust of the Earth.

 

Fistful by fistful—red hard folds

and faults. Heavenly loafs

risen in ovens of the epochs

 

tossed about in beautifully careless dunes

frozen in time.

The trouble they must have gone to,

 

mixing that dough and measuring

the coarse grain—

shoreline by shoreline,

 

one rocky outcropping at a time.

They rolled out Superior coastline,

Boreal lakebed, Canadian Shield.

 

Hideouts with names like Artist’s Point.

Stunning recipes

spotted with lead, nickel, and zinc,borrowed

 

from the lake Superior—

who took them from the Glacier

in a story long ago.

 

The lake floor gathers crumbs over time,

consuming the tales in endless waves

but the crust remains—

 

stale and lasting, hard

in the hardness of the gale winds

and the bone-cold swells.

 

I’ve seen the bread, bits of it in my hand,

studied fragments of stories unearthed

from the belly of the lake, but what I’d give

 

to take a mouthful of the heel,

halfway swallowed to the water’s hungry gullet—

chew till the wetness is taken from my mouth