DRIVING ON THE IRON RANGE

Driving on the Iron Range

(Sestina)

I
If he could see it now, gutted out and rusted.
Would he stop and sigh and wish for times gone by?
Sit back and slowly paint it over
to that garnet ruby or maroon it once had known?
Do we take a moment and wish for that youthful moment?
Would he long to drive with the kids to all the lakes?

II
He traveled with us slowly ten miles from Marble to Twin Lakes.
He guarded his classic, through many winters it hadn't rusted.
He watched and we boarded the canoe.  “In a moment,”
he would return to see us by and by.
It was an adventure into an area known
for its beach up north when we stayed over.

III
We didn't look til we were half way over
To the secret point across the beach. Hidden on those lakes,
or so we thought when we pitched our tent: “no one had known.”
Our unworkable Coleman camp stove, not Grandpa's car, was rusted.
For two weeks our eats:  Cheetos and the fish we caught, by
baited minnows from our seine. Safe until our swimming stirred the moment,

IV
and changed the summer of isolation into a teenage group moment.
It ended safely but we weren't sure until it was over
And the teenagers bored by our lack of anything to live by
Left us alone to swim and fish, moved on to sandy beaches at other lakes.
By a patch of blueberries, we were hungry, an old frame for a house and stove all rusted.
Perhaps, Grandpa had binoculars and checked on us, to us unknown

V
For me it wasn't until I walked that prairie, and saw the rusted shell of something I had known
It brought back the moment
Through all the years that turned to dust all rusted
It seems like yesterday, and now it's over
I've hiked on trails and past the few bodies of water in North Dakota they call lakes
I've taken my time to understand how he probably stood by.

VI
I wished I could've asked him how, by
letting us go, he could have known.
That we would search again to find those lakes
Every time we traveled and relived the moment
over and over
in our dreams. Until the red mining roads had also rusted

VII
He left our families with only pieces of life in a moment
Of nostalgia and longing for something that was over
Busted road or part of a prairie crumbled and rusted

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