Best Great Lakes Poems
Coast to Coast
The sun ascends over the Great Lakes
Settles back into the indigo depths
Flight of a copper swan shore to shore
With her sweeping wing tips skimming
Commanding
The azure locks of eternity to open
Gather her iron-ore souls from the cliffs
That lift along the turquoise bays
Arise
Our northern Holy Ghost.
These drinkable oceans are graves to glaciers
Tombs for freighters
Limestone crypts
Where condemned sailors still dance and drink
A thousand clicks amidst the ancient glow
Below
Moon boulders like mobiles of suspended fish.
It’s as if Michigan’s peninsulas
Was its own sliding green continents
Fitting together pieces of a new planet
Waves bellow a dare to all the apocalyptic surfers
Come sail these giant breaking swells.
Though you’re a dipped hand
Waving to outer space
It’s your down-to-Earth bare cold caress
That we count on for dousing the summer steam
From our steely brow.
Michiganians
Plant your bare feet into the hot tops
Of the Sand Dunes of Sleeping Bear
Prepare an avalanche slide
From the side of your hand
A child pushing away the world’s troubles
Throw out your hard chest
Reveal your beautiful breasts
Like the goddesses and gods that you are.
Gaze out from these colossal pink shores
To the horizon that bends like a violin
Under the chin of a setting sun.
Michiganians
You are the everlasting Keepers
Of the Mighty Mighty Great Lakes.
Pellucid pearls in northeastern North America
since planetary birth
Comprise Lakes Superior, Michigan, Huron,
Erie, and Ontario dearth
Largest group of freshwater lakes on Earth
Straddle Canadian–United States border
tethering partial global girth
Constituting 21% of world's surface
fresh water species hearth
Total surface equals 94,250 square miles
And total volume equals
5,439 cubic miles immeasurable worth.
Lake Erie from Erie tribe, abridged form
of Iroquoian word erielhonan “long tail”
Lake Huron named by French explorers
for Wyandot or “Hurons” whence they did sail
Lake Michigan likely from Ojibwa word mishigami
“great water” aka outsize gold quail
Lake Ontario i.e. “Lake of Shining Waters”
shimmering like hammered coat of mail
Lake Superior coined from French
“lac supérieur” "upper lake", an emerald watery dale
Ojibwe people called it gitchigumi medicinal
to cure that, which might ail.
These five lakes each reside in separate basin
Form a single, naturally interconnected body
of fresh water caisson
Linking east-central interior of North America
to Atlantic Ocean akin to an escutcheon.
From interior to outlet at St. Lawrence River,
Water flows via Superior to Michigan-Huron
southward to Erie to avoid a shiver
Finally released northward to Lake Ontario
as like a well taut archer with his quiver.
The lakes drain a large watershed via many rivers
as an Olympic team
Populated with approximately 35,000 islands
this estimate not x stream.
The Great Lakes region contains
many thousands of smaller lakes,
Often called inland lakes undulating
in cascading analogous to a fluid ream
Lake Michigan the only one located
entirely within United States
While the others border between
United States and Canada – essentially a liquid seam.
Lakes Michigan and Huron are basically a single lake,
Sometimes called Lake Michigan-Huron, combined doth make
Total area of 45,300 square miles (117,000 km2)
Have the same surface elevation of 577 feet (176 m),
Connected by 295-foot deep
dire Straits of Mackinac Islands splayed like a rake.
Approximately 35,000 islands extant
throughout oceanic like sea
largest among them is Manitoulin Island
in Lake Huron perhaps,
The largest island in any inland body
of water in the world.
The second-largest island is Isle Royale in Lake Superior.
Both of these islands are large enough to contain
multiple lakes themselves — Manitoulin Island's
Lake Manitou is listed in the Guinness Book
of World Records as the world's largest lake
located on a freshwater island.
Connection to the ocean:
The Saint Lawrence Seaway and Great Lakes Waterway
connect the Great Lakes to ocean-going vessels.
The move to wider ocean-going container ships —
which do not fit through the locks on these routes —
has limited container shipping on the lakes.
Most Great Lakes trade is of bulk material
and bulk freighters of Seawaymax-size or less
can move throughout the entire lakes and out
to the Atlantic. The Great Lakes are also connected
to the Gulf of Mexico by way of the Illinois River
(from the Chicago River) and the Mississippi River.
An alternate track is via Illinois River (from
Chicago), to Mississippi, up the Ohio, and then
through the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway
(combination of a series of rivers and lakes
and canals), to Mobile Bay and the Gulf.
Commercial tug-and-barge traffic on these waterways is heavy.
Pleasure boats can also enter or exit Great Lakes
by way of the Erie Canal and Hudson River in New York.
The Erie Canal connects to Great Lakes at
east end of Lake Erie (at Buffalo, New York) and
south side of Lake Ontario (at Oswego, New York).
Statistics:
The Great Lakes contain 21% of the world’s fresh surface water:
5,472 cubic miles (22,810 km3), or 6.0×1015 U.S.
gallons (2.3×1016 liters). This is enough water
to cover the 48 contiguous U.S. states to a uniform depth
of 9.5 feet (2.9 m).
Although the lakes contain
a large percentage of world's fresh water,
the Great Lakes supply only a small portion of
U.S. drinking water on a national basis (roughly 4.2%).
Winter 2009–10 was somewhat mild, the precipitation
was below normal for Great Lakes Basin.
Mean lake levels are thought to be slightly below or
at their levels of 2009. An ice jam in February 2010
dropped the level in Lake St. Clair. Since jelly roll more 'in jam
was removed the level has come back to its average.
As of March 2010, the lakes were at the level, or slightly
below, where they were in March 2009.
The combined surface area of the lakes is approximately
94,250 square miles (244,100 km2)—nearly
the same size as the United Kingdom, and larger
than U.S. states of New York, New Jersey, Connecticut,
Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Vermont, and New
Hampshire combined.The Great Lakes coast measures
approximately 10,500 miles (16,900 km);
however, the length of a coastline is impossible to measure
exactly and is not a well-defined.
An alternate track is via the Illinois River
(from Chicago), to the Mississippi, up the Ohio,
and then through the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway
(combination of a series of rivers and lakes and canals),
to Mobile Bay and the Gulf. Commercial
tug-and-barge traffic on these waterways is heavy.
Pleasure boats can also enter or exit the Great Lakes
by way of the Erie Canal and Hudson River in New York.
The Erie Canal connects to the Great Lakes
at the east end of Lake Erie (at Buffalo, New York)
and at the south side of Lake Ontario (at Oswego, New York).
Statistics:
The Great Lakes contain 21%
of the world’s fresh surface water: 5,472 cubic miles
(22,810 km3), or 6.0×1015 U.S. gallons (2.3×1016 liters).
This is enough water to cover the 48 contiguous U.S. states
to a uniform depth of 9.5 feet (2.9 m).
Although the lakes contain a large percentage
of the world's fresh water, the Great Lakes supply
only a small portion of U.S. drinking water
on a national basis (roughly 4.2%).
Winter 2009–10 somewhat mild, the precipitation
was below normal for the Great Lakes Basin.
Mean lake levels are thought to be slightly
below or at their levels of 2009.
An ice jam in February 2010 dropped
the level in Lake St. Clair. Since the jam
was removed the level has come back
to its average.
As of March 2010, the lakes were at the level,
or slightly below, where they were in March 2009.
The combined surface area of the lakes
is approximately 94,250 square miles
(244,100 km2)—nearly the same size
as the United Kingdom, and larger than
the U.S. states of New York, New Jersey,
Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts,
Vermont, and New Hampshire combined.
The Great Lakes coast measures approximately
10,500 miles (16,900 km); however,
the length of a coastline is impossible
to measure exactly and is not
well-defined measure (see Coastline paradox).
Above, a few feet,
From the gallery
Archaeologists spotted the empty space
Larger than the cross off M-68 by about 3 times
But they aren't the only ones exploring a void
Ancient like the pyramids is empty in the chest of the boys
Digging up the artifacts of time
Hidden in your lines
That I write
And when we collide
It's like a land mine
Hid in the jungle near a pyramid where
Built between rivers
2 shrines to weary livers and lovers
Whether its desert or monsoon weather,
When it's winter
You will be there
Somewhere in the hardware store
Picking out the tools you need
To dig more deeply
In the spaces left between
Or to mend that stupid leak
Aquifers and the Great Lakes
As aquifers in
the vast USA become
depleted and can’t,
by natures rains, be
replenished as quickly as
US needs require,
will their desires grow
stronger for the five great lakes…
to take by their force?
W.C.Hull © 2020-12-6-H1451-2561-I52-
K52-29-L59-1
wind off the great lakes
reminds me who is in charge
chills my bones brightly