We all come from somewhere.
I came from the lake,
from the gray water,
from the cold of November,
the heavy metal of the cold.
The mist laying like hands on the bay,
long fingers of silver
reaching into the gloom.
That is where I come from,
but born in May when the sun returned,
when the sleeping stopped,
when the grass was wet and clear
by the bay.
By the boats with their white skins,
their empty holds resounding on the water,
where my father went
and took me with my yellow hair,
my eyes the color of the violet,
the color of my birthday month.
He took me out on the bay
where the dark hand of the mist had laid,
where November turned to ice and darkness
until I was born,
and knew it in the land of the clear water,
Sandusky.
The land of the panther and wolf,
all gone,
like me all these years,
gone,
gone into summer,
past the disappearing suns of my father,
into November where I now live.
With the pale ghost of my mother
and the bay
still as the moon,
cold as a star.
With my stories all wrapped inside me,
waiting for my long boat,
to return to the waters
that nourished me.