When ways aren’t adverse, the lake may be traversed—
You’re exempt from worry about tempting fate.
The Indians were versed, in its legends immersed;
They called it “Gitche Gumee,” sobriquet that’s great.

But across to zip, a ship must be well-equipped
Because sometimes the winds can whip savagely.
Clippers that have shipped into wild waves have dipped. . .
Should be no schvitz if you’ve done what has to be.

There’s a freighter whose crew is a good one and true,
And back in their homes they have children and wives;
They are the ones who, when their men sail, will rue,
Fearing they’ll get the news the dudes have lost their lives.

The storms engender on the lake in November
And can be treacherous for objects that float,
Like boats; fair gender want men alive to remember,
But off on the water, of terra—not a mote.

All should be ensured; ’cause the ship is secured
As tight as the cork in a bottle of wine.
The captain’s inured, in fine fettle, has abjured
These fears—no tears or flowers—it’s departure time.

To song kibitzing captain won’t be listening
As he helms the large ore barge across the chop:
Piloting it ’s him through waters glistening,
And his respect for it’s on his list, at the top.

Of waters this day in November, one must say
That the forecast doesn’t augur well. “OK?”
That is a big “nay”! And it gets in a worse way. . .
Waves great as towers; the freighter joins the fray.
,
They rise up like tall battlements. . .abruptly fall
The cerulean sky is transformed to black,
Bilge bulges not small burgeon in the awful squall,
Darkness like night closes in, but they can’t turn back.

The sunlight has failed, and frantic is the gale,
Which with the ship is damnably violent,
And all the men wail, hoping they don’t have to bail.
One thing’s certain: the rolling waves ain’t indolent.

The wind in the wires makes a tattletale sound
That engenders a sense of trepidation,
And every man’s found a sense of the profound
And the witch of November’s peculation.

When suppertime comes, the old cook comes on deck,
And then he says to all his assembled friends:
“Fellas, it’s been good to know ya!” with sodden neck.
“I just want to say, ‘Thanks’—no need to make amends.”

Phrases not florid direct but not morbid. . .
Not a man to sugar-coat the situation.
Fast move the torrents, ironically, they’re torrid
And quite likely to lead to inundation.

What is it will do the firm and final coup
To this huge freighter that is bigger than most?
Right now it seems true: the ship has a doomed crew.
No one will ever know how they gave up the ghost.

Rocking is the great ship; the storm does not abate.
She might have split up in the inglorious gloom.
And every crate of furniture meets its fate,
Along with the men, entombed beneath the spume.

They might have capsized as over rolled the rails,
With the pitiless, indifferent wind screaming.
Such things and travails might have cause her to fail
And stream to the bottom where fish are teeming.

But all the applied communications had died.
Later, when searchers surge the surface, pancake-flat,
A clue they ain’t spied, although hard they have tried—
They can’t view a dude, post-lake-and-freighter spat.

But with the case closed, what now happens to those,
All the women whose men on the Fitz went down?
Right now, things don’t pose the sanguine hue of rose,
Not to the blondes or those whose hair hue is brown.

Lost galleon that day made it not to Whitefish Bay,
Tossed in tumult in the aqueous “château”
Made of—one could say, in which no one would sashay—
Many billions of gallons of not-“de vie” eau.

In the rooms of her ice-water mansion, there,
Are found no dance balls or photos on the walls.
Superior sings, Huron rolls, much like the hair
Of Marie and Louis—tumbr’ling down [sic], each crown falls.

Sucklike f**ked, the Fitz, which was a fantastic
And grand ship, a-way back in its glory days.
The home front depicts a scene more domestic:
Widows searching for some hope, still in a daze.

In a musty old hall in Detroit they prayed
In the “Maritime Sailors Cathedral.”
They want answers made from the god they’d obeyed,
But all their supplications He can’t fulfill.

Does anyone know where the love of God goes
While they think of their sailors in those dark hours?
There in the storm’s throes, no island for repose.
It’s clear, the attitude of those left behind sours.

But they’re confessing that this is distressing,
Such that it suffers them to shed bitter tears
For men who’re pressing their luck, sextant-caressing,
Be it on a great lake or at sea with their peers.

Now it is the wide Superior that hides
The bones of guys, embalmed in the maritime
Coffin where they died with winds whistling on all sides.
The church bell chimed till it rang twenty-nine times.

The legend has led from Chippewa past men Red.
Knife-sharp are the words of the story, surely.
“Superior,” they said, “never gives up her dead
When the gales of November come early!”