Poem: Huron Bay, Mouth of the Huron

The Mouth of the Huron is a beach just north of Skanee on Lake Superior. It is where the Huron river begins or ends. Last summer (well the end of summer, really; it was September) I camped on the beach, rode my bike up and down the desolate road leading to the tree-spotted camping area. The beach stretches 2 miles. It was quiet and private when I camped there. But I heard stories of raucous parties that happened in the deep of summer - people staying in trailers and tents for weeks at a time, drinking, fighting. I"m glad I missed the party.

The Mouth holds many of my childhood memories - loosely in its wavy fingers crashing against the gentle sand. Childhood is a funny thing - it is such a great amazing time that keeps fading and fading like the sound of the waves as you drive away from a weekend camping trip at the Mouth of the Huron.

Here is a poem.

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[This is my youth...]

This is my youth. A sandy beach - no, a corridor between blacktop and black deep lake water. Between suntanned children in striped shorts and edematous men with fish eggs in their mouths. Summers were cold. Me and you and you and me were the youngest and silliest. I stole our father’s lighter and tiny Swiss Army knife and together we dug out a pit in the sand and played cave-men. We set pieces of lakegrass on fire. Your fingers blistered from holding hot rocks against your chubby cheeks. I kissed them and you were embarrassed.

You called them dinosaur bones. I called them the thigh and spine of a brontosaurus. A huge skeleton washed ashore after unfathomable years beneath the sky of Lake Superior. There is a picture of us on top of those bones - little parasites surrounding the death of a monster. Later, I told you the truth. Huge tree trunks felled and rotted, moldy and useless. Even more terrible.

Wet foamy Huron Bay sand
is like the softness of hairy
skinned children’s knees
that are knobbed and gnarled
from the unyielding excitement
of jumping and crashing
into one another and into the sand.

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This is poem #2 in a series of poems I am writing about the great U.P.

Oh, I found this blog that I thought was cool.

http://www.someyooperbeach.com