Journey back to Frontenac—
Earth Island mist of time,
Pull your craft on the stony shore,
Lift your gaze to the leaden sky.

Plunge into time,
Deep into the Holocene,
Lay your hand upon the eternal,
Send your prayer on a swan’s wing.

Polished stone, effigy birds,
The whitest shell from a southern sea,
Gifts for the honored, walking west,
Following the starlit highway.

The eagle lies buried among the people of the island,
Resting in the old village below the dance ground,
Asleep beneath a sky-path headed north,
Meeting the eastern raptor flyway.

Wind off the lake,
Birds banking east,
Following Ontario’s ancient coast,
Into the Laurentian summer.