Herd of Waves James P. Lenfestey

HERD OF WAVES (JULY 22, 2020)

James P. Lenfestey

Storm clouds clock round east toward danger, night already pummeled by twisted bolts and screws and blunder, garbage soaring like gulls in contradictory wind.

As soaked dawn lifts it’s clumsy scrim on wildness—herds of white gap-toothed waves gallop from the east, terrifying, mean, devouring uninterrupted sea, a hundred miles of open rage.

Seated on civilization’s high and haughty rock, we watch, crumbling and helpless as waves stampede, trample remnants of our old lives, once clean and pure, artifacts and stories for the dawdling young.

Roads, walls, ambition, history, our family names, old lighthouse cut off at the hips, confidence shot, struggling to swim, Chicago and Milwaukee surged, dunes gored.

And yet… 1000-foot, 8000 long-tonne loads of taconite from the gutted shore of Lake Superior sail through, no one asleep on that deck,

unless laid up in fear round St. Mary’s curve until the swirling mad disturbance

passes, if it does.