"Slag Flower" and "My Northern Lake," two poems by Thomas Leduc

Slag Flower

My father was born to a hardened start,

fitted with the business of putting seed to stone.

His nickel plated pollen was hauled to the surface

scattered about into pockets of change,

the seeds to an industrial revolution.

I was recycled from the minerals of these calloused hands,

planted in the long shadow of my fathers’ slag,

born and smelted into a life of iron and ore,

I was raised to the common core of a mining town.

A city that cultivated and refined me, until a union was tendered between us.

Together we sprouted upon this rock into new shade of green,

all sulphur speckled leaves, all sky scraping stem,

all milled in metaphor and rusting in the rain.

I am this city, and this city is me, and together,

we bend to the light, and beg to bloom.

My Northern Lake

Come with me, I’ll show you beauty, I’ll show you life,

I’ll show you where the loon swallows the sun

and the moon sits in the eye of a snow-owl.

To where painted trees shimmer across the landscape,

setting the lakes on fire.

To where every stroke of our paddle

slices the water’s skin

and pushes away our daily wounds.

Come with me, to where we slowly undo

the knots of our everyday lives.

 To where we set our stresses free

 to float in fresh water and bundle up

 at the mouth of some river,

like a well-woven nest,

cradling our anxieties in it’s broken fingered hand.

Come with me, and we’ll trickle through the dam

like blinking eyelashes in the sun.

We’ll meet the day together,

we’ll leave our past behind

and get baptized by the boreal.

I’ll stir your soul and you can stir mine,

until our muscles hurt, until the sun sets,

until our breath turns to frost and the water to ice.

Come with me to my northern lake,

where time drifts away on a youthful dream

and simply sets us free, for a while.

Thomas Leduc lives and works in Sudbury. He has been writing poetry for several years and is currently the Poet Laureate of Greater City of Sudbury. His poetry and short stories often reflect the opposing influences of nature and industry on the people of a northern city and their struggle to keep these influences in balance. 

In 2012, “My Northern Lake”. won a poetry contest put on by the Vale Living with Lakes Centre, and it was published in the Our Lakes Shall Set Us Free anthology. Tom is currently a member of the Sudbury Writers’ Guild and is trying to publish his first book of poetry.

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