228 OHIO
HISTORY
LAKE ERIE
Deep, shallow, becalmed, turbulent,
Restless, undulant, constantly nascent,
Shingled by feathers and aerated spray,
Its mobile surface rarely quiescent;
Glacier-born and glacier-scoured,
Time-clock of steady terrestrial action,
Unfolding to eager sensate ears
Nature's story in constant redaction;
Symbol of restless liquidity,
Nursery of storms and tumultuous
roaring,
Playground of sail and fin and man,
Magnet of wing's resistant soaring!
By day its dome uplifted skyward --
At night snatched from darkness by Orion
Or its Undine face bending to the moon,
Mistress in vesture riparian;
The moon's ectoplasm rises out of the
water;
The wind spills waves' spray on aqueous
floor;
Erie, talking a ringing, wild slang,
Annexes the inundated shore.
LAKE ERIE 229
Patterns of sloping architecture,
Its waves by on-shore winds entangled,
Sequinned surfaces, fragmented by sun,
Dazzle like silk, with silver spangled.
These restless waves in endless motion
Shedding snatches of song like petals,
Hurling long conduits on sloping
beaches,
Sulking along the mouths of deltas,
Gnawing at damp sand with clawing
fingers,
Reaching where bush and grasses cower,
Racing in inlets with o'erwhelming
swell,
Exert full charismatic power;
The tumbling waves burst with flourish
of lace,
Rolling landward with wildest surges,
In vitreous pour over reef and shore,
With thundering cry like Boanerges.
Lake winds stir lightly the shoreland
sedges,
Play Aeolian tricks where'er they please
--
Mounting roughly along untended shores,
They bend and tilt tall sycamore trees.
The lake's rich life loosed by fingers
of dawn
Is stilled when Venus dips below,
Pleasing the moods of night's votaries
Or diffusing the sunlight in noon's
great glow.
G. HARRISON ORIANS