I live in Wisconsin surrounded by water

On Lake Superior, At Munising

The furnaces:  Their heat-wrought

Raw chunks of iron muddle at shore

With stones and shards of charcoal

Where they were shed, cast and left

Glowing red when the fires cooled

Cheap, scuffed labor, barracks, faces

Alit for the furnaces.  They cut,

Dug, hauled, fucked, shipped, fed

The fire.  That was the most vital:

                        Fire

The hillsides shoveled out

Waters churning orange, forests

Carted off, the industry burned

Dirt into profits, purifying dirt

So I thought I would burn, burn

Away debris, burn up anger, fury

Set fire to temper, singe depression

Indifference, become a furnace

Build walls of boulders wrapped in steel

Pour into the top the ore, the fuel

With an opening at the bottom

For the molten derelict of me to trickle out.

                          To my surprise,

After I constructed such a thing

And fired up the burn, hot as hell

My chest of lungs and breath

Glowed red and white and hollow

Curling backbone hissed and gave

Reduced to ashes, and the hole below

Gushed with flame, igniting the grounds

Those milling about my life, ablaze

Burned beyond recognition.  Chunks

Of iron, to be forgotten, fondled

By a century’s waves.  How

Can I justify the work, the structure

When just char remains of me

And even boulders pop to dust?