That Azure Highway

The great highway 

of Étienne Brûlé, Père Marquette,

and Antoine de Cadillac; 

twenty-eight azure miles 

connecting Duluth, Chicago, 

Sault Ste. Marie, and

the ghosts of Penn/Dixie 

to Toronto, Gaspe, 

and the world. 

Grandpa, born and raised on 

its big-sky eastern banks, 

swam to meet girls,

eat ice cream and climb 

the stairs of the Buhl Building. 

Later, he swam to hop 

a train headed west. 

He hopped a train 

to St. Louis, eating 

squirrel and muskrat

before thumbing rides 

down Tom Joad’s Mother Road 

to Tucumcari and Flagstaff. 

That azure highway was 

his point of origin 

and the point of origin 

for millions heading 

to flapjacks and whiskey 

in old logging camps 

from Quick to Logan, 

to sunless depths and 

missing digits in the 

copper mines of Keweenaw. 

When Grandpa scaled the shoreline, 

he saw the future like all of 

his French forebears. 

Like the Anishinaabe, the Wyandot, 

the Sauk, he saw tomorrow’s 

industry and pain. 

When Grandpa scaled the shoreline, 

he tasted that sweet vintage 

of hope and anticipation.

Translucent and Forgotten

“There is nothing as imposing as anonymity” 

Ottessa Moshfegh, Death in Her Hands

Across the river valley, 

the tree line all amber 

and vermilion. 

Autumn sun glows through 

late afternoon séance; 

the ghosts of fallen Normalites 

haunt the hills. 

Each lived a life unaccounted. 

Each ghost, now translucent and forgotten, 

was once the centre. 

Around them, the world spun too, 

just as it does around us all. 

Translucent and forgotten, 

they were once important, 

if only in their own song. 

If only in their own narrative space. 

We weren’t even footnotes 

in their memoirs: 

never were our stories appended to theirs. 

And theirs, absent from our own. 

Someone wiser than me once said, 

“We are all extras in 

the ongoing play of the other.” 

We sit on the sidelines, 

on the curbs during Fourth of July

parades as the candy is 

thrown at our feet. 

Those sweet morsels 

will never replace 

the ghosts of fallen Normalites, 

will never situate us 

as anything other than 

ourselves.