The deep, ’tis not a gentle spring;
’tis cold where fish are trolled.
This inland sea, largest of seven—
Oops, make that five; my math is ebbin’.
Its waters the most bold.

It will fill buckets on a deck
As over the rails spray rains.
And the bilge will quickly fill too—
Keeping bailed big boats takes pains.

So shippers fret when their boats go
Across this lake that ranks
As the greatest of the great team;
If shipsafe, they give thanks.

Too cool is it in which to swim
It shrivels both balls, post.
This song, I hope, won’t make you weep.
This drivel done?! Almost.

If looms a huried, roaring wind
A mariner can hear,
That sound will almost never fail
To make mouths sere with fear.

A scupper air can scourge if rife,
As hundreds of times ’tis seen.
So to hurry on the big lake out
May cause boats to suffer rout—
Well, you know what I mean.

In water volume, it does one proud,
Though two others have an edge.
With the third-place title ’tis endowed;
Its depths a steep-ledge wedge.

When rains came and this cleft was filled,
It loomed so vast and wide.
Vast are the numbers, that’s a fact,
Numbers that will make one react—
This much liquid inside:

Three-thousand cubic miles has it. . .
Surface goes on and on.
By that measure, largest lagoon;
It’s girth extent is known:

The square miles number do compose
Thirty-two thousand, nigh.
In which fish teem, on which ships steam. . .
The biggest, baddest “guy.”

-------------------------------------------------

The helmsman steered, the ship moved on;
Not gentle, breezes that blew.
The mariners had evanesced hopes;
The choices, they seemed few.
The radio, a lifeless tool—
It was a doleful crew.

It bothers us now that no one
Was there to see how the
Boat bobbed upon the slippery slope
Of waves then slipped beneath.

’tis clear: the fated mariners
Would not that day be blessed.
The wind was cold and hard the rain,
The boat bobbed on the bounding main,
But here is what some have guessed:

The idea dawned: they would face harm;
The gust might be their last.
Winds hit them from north, east, west, south,
And each a ghastly blast.

Around, around flew the freak sounds. . .
Too dark to see the sun.
The sounds, bounding would not relent;
Witch season had begun.

The heartless rain dropped from the sky,
So hard each drop did sting
Each young swabbie and salty tar,
From dry land was so very far—
A day of reckoning.

And how was it, the instruments
All suddenly went mute?
They’d played “Mayday!” not very long;
When they went dead, they were moot.

The radio then pumps were gone,
So in the hold beneath,
Water started to fill the ship—
At least, ’tis one belief.

Under the keel, ’tis fathoms deep,
A thousand feet down below,
That is in fathoms—let me see
(I will not measure metrically!)
1-6-6, less or mo’.
(At metric runes, I am a goon—
It always will be so.)

In water pumped, spurred by the blast,
Impeding the boat’s motion.
The waves as big as those that stir
On a sore and meanie ocean.
The men needn’t go to the length
Of the greasing of screen lotion.

Then like a pawing horse let go,
She made a sudden bound.
And water bashed in the bulkhead;
Went she down then in that sound.

She had been near to Whitefish Bay
But could not steer to there.
It was a voyage of no-return
As those back home would later learn.
None sayeth life be fair.

They would be, each one and every man
On the lake bed, crew and boss.
The winds were cross; they could not cross—
A high cost: all were lost.

Now beneath the continental shelf
Sits the Fitz, which shipped below.
Above the birds swoop with élan;
Winds stop not and still blow.

Then to this story did give voice
A Canadian who
Sang also of the gone-down sun.
I’m not done. Next: review.