The 1847 Dutch settlers
settled in a swamp
they didn’t know
was just so
till the spring when
there was a big melt
of snow.
So they chopped and
sawed and cut
all the trees
and drained the swamp
after the big freeze.
They dug a channel
and sent those logs
flying into the breeze.
They farmed the land
and brought prosperity
to that hardworking,
immigrant
community,
but over the years, the
fertilizer and run off
polluted the lake
name Black
and the citizens
a century
and a half later
didn’t know
if they would
get their
lake back
from farmland
spill and phosphorus
and wondered, “What will
happen to us?”
Well, some really smart
academic folk said,
“This is not a joke; if you
want to make your
lake pristine,
you have to create some
watersheds to
make that water clean.”
So, believe it or not, as if
by God’s grace,
the country club of the old,
blue-nosed
Dutch went belly up
and it was just the right
place.
That low, lying land
became a water shed
to hold back all
the pollutants of dread
and clean water started to
come back as it was
in the good, old days
before the Dutch displaced
the Ottawas.