December 26, 2005

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                         Ecological Redemption

   

  Written after Acie and I went last weekend  to see this remarkable wetlands area,

  surrounded by the remains of Big Steel, factory after factory laid waste now, only the

  Gary Works up and going, the old Acme steel plant to be a museum if funds are found.

  The southern border of the 300 acre Big Marsh is a huge hill of landfill, seeping crud of

  all kinds into the water table. 

   

           

   

                    Big Marsh Looking West At The Acme Steel Plant

     

  Lake Calumet, across the road, was saved from being dredged for an airport not so

  long ago and the Big Marsh itself, was only recently saved from draining to make a

  bus barn for the Chicago Transit Authority. Another victory was the extension of the ban

  on landfill within the region.  The edge of the landfill on the south of the marsh is within a

  few feet of the water.

   

                

   

  Here are Sierra Club photographs of some of the water fowl and fauna of the

  Calumet wetlands.

   

  This is only the beginning of a poem, not there yet, but looking as if it will make it.

  .

  The Big Marsh

   

  The Big Marsh,  

  Wetnurse to lives

  Linked in webs

  Of perfect tension

  Held in your rich waters,

  Full as a mother's arms.

   

  Landfill,

  Old temples to the

  Age of Steel,

  Your borders

  Were confrontation

  At the edge

  Of your map, 

  No fences against

  Poisons

  Carrying the machinery

  Of little deaths

  Into your heart waters. 

   

  Fireworks,

  Sparks

  From pouring steel

  No longer lace the air,*

  And the threads

  Of the web

  In the shape of a wheel,

  Holding within

  All necessary nutrients,

  Spin,

  Twinning this bird

  To that grass,

  This moth 

  To that weed, 

  This light in the water,

  That plant

  To this small fish

  Feeding

  Under winter ice,

  Those tall reeds

  Home

  To the birds of summer.

  Offering origins

  To fly from.

   

   

   

  pearlbamboo

   

   

  copyright e.p. hodges

   

   

  *Acie is completing a cd on the Calumet region, a place where American steel

  stoked the expansion of big buildings and skyscrapers, where immigrant populations

  came to work in the mills, with their festivals and churches,  where Lake Michigan and

  the Chicago and Calumet rivers provided transportation, linking industry, labor and nature.

  He grew up in the area and remembers when day and night, the skies would fill with

  showers of sparks like fireworks and everyone would look at each other and say, "Well,

  I guess they're pouring steel."  I am totally spellbound by this and wonder

  what it must have been like to see these extraordinary displays and know it was

  "just some plant making steel". 

  • 5:14 am
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