How My Man Came to Leave

Yesterday the Sanilac County Historical Society conducted an event called "House in Mourning" at their museum.  It included a cemetery walk where I served as a volunteer.  I read the following poem at the grave of three sailors who drowned in a storm on Lake Huron.  This year is the 100th anniversary of The Storm of 1913. In one week in November eight ships and over 200 sailors were lost on Lake Huron alone.


How My Man Came to Leave
Some men work the factory floor;
some men work at a trade. But here men go down to the sea in ships,
our husbands, brothers,
and sons.
They tell you it’s to put food on the table,
they tell themselves that too.
But there is a pull beyond earning a living.
The lake is a temptress,
smiling,
beguiling. In summer she’s a sirenin shimmering sapphires.A sailor’s seduction ensues.Through the Summer a sailor's
enthralled with this mistress.
His home and his family
in memory dim.
But Autumn brings a new look to the lake.
Still attractive, dignified,
but portending a change,
foretelling a graceless aging
                                                                                                                 too soon coming.
By November the lake has become
a bitter old wench, angry, short tempered.
She senses her suitors are longing to leave her,to abandon herbeneath the coming ice.
But unwilling to die old and lonely,
one week in November
during the season of ’13,
Old Dame Huron reached up her icy arms,
heaved her mighty breath,

and snapped eight ships.
More than two-hundred lovers she took to bed,
never to wake.
Few were left to tell the fate
of their ship and of their brothers.

On shore, 
I soon learn the news
I do not wish to hear.

My sailor has abandoned me
to lie forever by the side
of that Jezebel,
Huron.