The Lighthouses Remember
The Edmund Fitzgerald was an ore freighter, the biggest on the lakes when she launched,
She knew it too, you could tell by the way she sailed herself, queen of these inland seas,
Blasting music from her loudspeakers like a floating dance party, melody echoing off the water,
She broke records, carried more iron ore than anyone thought possible, twenty-six thousand tons
Like it was nothing, she was a celebrity, people would line the shores just to watch her pass,
This seven-hundred-twenty-nine-foot movie star making the hard work look like joy.
I have a beautiful cliff top view as the Split Rock Lighthouse, I used to keep watch above shoals,
She would pass below me and call out with her horn, an audible wave as she steamed along,
I retired six years before my friend’s fateful journey, but tonight I light my lamp,
It has been fifty years since you slipped away but tonight my beacon sweeps brightly again,
My lantern carries a lingering hope that my friend will see my beam and find a way home,
Even though I know that she lies silently in her grave, five hundred and thirty feet beneath the waves.
I am the guardian of Superior Harbor, the Wisconsin Point Lighthouse, and she was my friend,
That last morning, two score and ten years ago, I watched the taconite pour into her for hours,
Tons and tons burnt red pellets settling in her belly, and the sky was wanting to turn dark and ugly,
She knew when her horn mournfully sounded cast off, that the weather was going to get mean,
But she had her crew to take care of, had her schedule to keep, steel mills to feed,
As she left, her horn hummed a saluted, “See ya in a week”, then she was gone into the gathering gloom.
I am from Paradise, the town of, and I am Whitefish Point Light Station watching the turn,
That day came in like shotgun blast, summer to fall then into winter’s furious grip in hours,
First came the summer’s storm of rain, then fall’s winds grew until winter’s ice and heavy snow,
It was not the rain nor the wind that bogged me down but that damn ice choked out my generators,
My bright beacon went out, if I had not failed, my friend would have seen my light and steered true.
Just seventeen miles away, my friend lost and blind without my light to guide, disappeared into her final goodnight.
I stand just down the two lane from Paradise, the Point Iroquois Light,
I stand my watch over Whitefish Bay, I was anxious for my friends out in the storm, the Arthur Anderson and Fitzgerald,
My nearby guardian’s beacon disappeared and then the Anderson called saying the Fitz was gone,
The Coast Guard said they could not go, this was a once in a hundred years’ blow,
I asked my friends for help, William Clay Ford, Hilda Marjanne, and the Anderson turned, back into death’s storm,
I turned my lamp up to help them look, but the radio cracked, all that was left was an oil slick and a beat-up raft.
Tonight we four gather in spirt with what is left of the families of the twenty-nine,
Lights of passing freighters twinkle, one seventeen miles away, drops a wreath that no one will see,
Inside in the cozy warmth, hugs and kind words are passed, and then a hush falls, the time has come,
At 7:10pm, all eyes to our friend’s beautiful brass bell, the only part of her above the waves,
Our friend speaks from the grave, twenty-nine families toll the bell, with a final thirtieth chime for all,
We can never mourn together, permanently locked in our places, but each ring of the bell shakes our foundations.
Photo of the Edmund Fitzgerald from: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Edmund_Fitzgerald,1971,_3_of_4(restored).jpg