Great Lakes Trust
The glaciers melted and then the Lakes were born,
Sacred waters to the first along the shores.
Soon forests fell; for mines, the land was torn.
Settlers came and plowed the fields for corn.
Towns and cities, businesses, and stores,
Factories dumping waste, mines discharging ores,
Cow dung filling streambeds from concentrating pens,
And cars and trucks and roadways—always more and more.
Locks being built—a way to sea now opens,
Freighters blow the ballast they haven’t cared to cleanse.
Lamprey, quagga, zebra now welcome to invade,
While the natives die off quickly as the old food chain upends.
A reversal of the river at Chicago’s strangely made,
Three billion gallons daily is all they claim they need,
While St. Clair river dredging six billion more conveys.
So water levels drop, and wetlands all degrade.
Yes, profits for the grasping, outlandish feats of greed,
A few get rich, all others forced to pay—
From rule and regulation by manipulation freed,
They take as theirs what to all has been bequeathed.
But now the people know, and now the people say,
“The Lakes are ours, the Lakes belong to us,
No more harbors fouled, no more water drained away,
Our sacred duty to them we will nevermore betray.”
The seven generations coming, remind us that we must
Declare the Lakes a commons, held in public trust.