Karla Linn Merrifield

THIRD COAST SCHERZI SUITE,

WEST TO EAST

I.

Gordon Lightfoot’s Lake Superior’s
Superior Prayer for the Sailors
Lost in Geologic Depths

Say Gitchee-Goomee,
say Edmund Fitzgerald, amen.

II.

The Great Lakes’ Prettiest Stones
Come from Michigan Shores

Smooth, coraled Petoskey stones
to pocket—rock art, rock-old.

III.

On Huron’s Northern Shore,
Granite Underfoot

From native waters
the Canadian Shield rises.

IV.

Pelee (ONT, CAN) and Kelley’s (OH, USA),
Limestone Islands in Lake Erie

Migrations o’er glacial
grooves below the shallow sea.

V.

Close Range at Dawn, Lit Stem
to Stern on Lake Ontario

Laker, St. Lawrence-bound,
in her holds: iron cargo.

Author Biography

A seven-time Pushcart-Prize nominee and National Park Artist-in-Residence, Karla Linn Merrifield has had nearly 300 poems appear in dozens of journals and anthologies. She has seven books to her credit, the newest of which is The Ice Decides: Poems of Antarctica (Finishing Line Press). Forthcoming from Salmon Poetry is Athabaskan Fractal and Other Poems of the Far North, Her Godwit: Poems of Canada. (FootHills) received the 2009 Eiseman Award for Poetry. She is assistant editor and poetry book reviewer for The Centrifugal Eye (www.centrifugaleye.com). Visit her blog, Vagabond Poet, at http://karlalinn.blogspot.com.