Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, MICHIGAN SUMMER, by THOMAS DEL VECCHIO


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

MICHIGAN SUMMER, by                    
First Line: By sweat and hunger, stealth and guile
Last Line: Will find it easy now to die.
Subject(s): Lakes; Michigan; Nature; Parks; Summer; Pools; Ponds


By sweat and hunger, stealth and guile,
You buy your way: two cents a mile;
You sleep the way glum cattle do,
And totter off at Kalamazoo --
O anywhere and any town
That keeps spring green and autumn brown --
O any place that doesn't ache
With the madness that we make.
A field that suckles out of earth
Still holds whatever is of worth;
A sprig of mint or celery
Will hint how sweet the earth can be;
And where you find a place to rest
Upon the earth's ungrudging breast,
You learn what town-men never do:
The whole great scheme was made for you.

In Milham Park a hushing sleep
Is what the sun-drenched maples keep;
In a recess bright and cool
Boys splash music in a pool.
A brook is yours with which to stroll
The fringe of silence in a knoll;
No sudden horn or human sound
Will blast the curve of peace you've found;
And here a man steps clean and proud,
And not a stench among the crowd.

On Sundays simple folk come out
To learn what music is about.
The summer sleeps, a sweep of strings;
Then, waking, all the forest rings
With joyous magic added to
The simple joys of Kalamazoo.
If you would trip the waltz you might

Dance it here and dance it right;
A rhapsody is just the thing
When people are about to sing.
A man who sees the corn come up,
Each day a little, chick and pup,
Unmarred by craft and artifice,
Is one with every tone of this.
Now all around him, shy or droll,
The music-muted children stroll,
Grace meditating; where they pass
Babes clench their fists in earth-clean grass,
If you love music, music-wise,
You'll love it in a baby's eyes,
And not subdued and scowling merely
Where the programs snap austerely . . .
I do not say that what we miss
Is found alone in towns like this,
For men of average lecheries
Have built their belching factories,
And every day is rush and gulp
To meet the speed-up making pulp.
But something here survives the cost
Of all the normal things we lost;
Unless we nurse this dying spark
We'll never laugh in Milham Park
Or anywhere, and each day less.
We'll lose the little we possess.

"And this," said one, "is red-light street."
But where I looked a home was neat,
And what a woman had to cook
Is what a jobless husband took;
And if the children cried in bed,
How can you leave the thing unsaid?
What nature gives and more imputes
Is what the greedy man pollutes,
And nature rarely made a whore
We didn't raise among the poor.
But even here the flashing eye
Of one who held her baby high,
A mocking symbol, brave and hale,
Of something that was not for sale . . .

You learn to hope and wish again
Along the blue Lake Michigan,
And dwell on sights you never saw
Along the way to Mackinaw.
A forest huddled on a hill,
A joy in green but bluish still;
A stretch of meadow or an oak
Twisting the wind's way, or a stroke
Of silver, the striped birch
Darting by like clustered perch.
Dropped beyond a cliff a gleam
Of something that you only dream . . .
The lake is blue but often grey --
It all depends upon the day
And always changes with the light.
But why be partial? What of white
That curls and sweeps like sudden lace
From Benton Harbor to Ignace?
You name the colors, even yet,
You lose them when the sun is set.
(That palest lavender in-shore
Is more than what a print is for.)
Of dazzling sunsets you behold,
The sheerest and the best is gold.
Still what is color without sound?
A rhythm laps the whole around . . .
I cannot fix the sound at all
Unless I say a waterfall
That slips sound sidewise, improvising
And unstressed song lost in surmising;
The sound you find within a shell
Is what the lake-sound is as well.

. . . Petosky hills are all inlaid
With every green the earth has made,
And this rich emerald, sunlit gay,
Sweeps down to Little Traverse Bay.
You'll find no match in such bright things
Unless you search in Harbor Springs;
But there the yachts glide in like pride
And throttle down the song inside.
Their owners sparkling rich repute
Convey a lie you can refute,
And who can tell what pain and bruise
Have seamed the yachts in which they cruise?
Their faces may be tanned and hard,
But they can't win a man's regard.
It's not a thing a yacht can hold,
Or something that you change for gold;
But you will find it in the eyes
Of someone humble, earthly-wise;
And you can't buy it, never fear:
He gives it with a glass of beer.

Beneath these trees where bleak crows caw
Once slipped the stealthy Chippewa,
Banished now, and coughing dread,
Living though their race is dead.
For every wonder days impart
A human action chills the heart
And blurs the splendor, some man-stroke
Will count the acres, fit the yoke . . .
The sun still dips persimmon-red
Into the lake that is its bed;
At dusk a crawling boat will stroke
A blur of movement, hauling smoke . . .
Through the birches in profusion
I crunch down to brief seclusion;
Death merges into living here:
Above the dead roots, spry and sheer,
A squirrel marks my squinting frown,
And drops a tiny acorn down.
A headlong scampering streak of fur
Signals where the chipmunks were;
A rigid one I came upon
Was much too startled to move on.
I hold my breath, O wonder-starved,
Such tininess so greatly carved!
Because I whistled craftily
A lonely bird darts down to me,
And I dip down towards rock and foam
To what should always be my home.

I've seen them on a teeming beach,
Far as eye or hope could reach;
I've seen them lined-up, wild, inhuman,
Pay to have a wretched woman;
I've seen them packed so close in slums
My heart to nausea still succumbs . . .
But here the miles of beach are mine,
From silvered birch to incense-pine;
And if a gnawing thought I keep,
The lake will lull me back to sleep;
No matter what the mind's new tack,
The wind will catch and bring it back . . .

Each thing in nature has a sign
That fits it in the one design;
A lake will toss and screech in storm
To keep her inner self in form,
And where the gases grow corrupt
A brooding mountain will erupt;
And each within himself must hold
The thing that will not let him mould.
If men won't clean their own pig-sty,
Their fate is mine until they try;
But they will rot before they find
The simple motes that make them blind,
And while we grope the world is wide
Waiting for us to get inside:
I keep a dream of peace and I
Will find it easy now to die.





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