I. He grew up urban near Halsted Street across from Kickapoo Woods                       through which ran a tributary to the Little Calumet River. As a kid,                                      he ran Indian wild through those musical woods,

II. along the banks and dreamed of paddling birch bark canoes                                            he read about and saw pictures of                                                                                     in his grandmother’s Encylopedia of views.

III. The Grand Kankakee Marsh, once God’s renewable pantry,                                         half a million acres, which nourished                                                                               and fed with flora and fauna the Potawatomi

IV. for months at a time and then the Europeans                                                             came with their philosophy,  noble history, scientific efficiency,                                        burgeoning commerce and economy,                                                                         plundered for progress and prosperity.

V. Lake Macatawa, Black Lake, the lake of the Ottawa Indians                                         filled with fish for the people and, then the Europeans,                                                 Dutch religious separatists to be specific, following, of course,                                             what they believed to be God’s purpose,                                                                  drained the swamp, made farms, were fruitful and multiplied                                             the silt which flowed into the dark lake darkening it from the inside.

VI. Bogs Island was a criminal hide-out on Beaver Lake                                                     in the Great Kankakee Marsh – a singular sign of prosperity on the make.                Corruption following progress progressed into the pristine swamp.                              Greed in the guise of prosperity continued to draw swampy politicians on the take,         who drained, near the Great Lakes, the then greatest inland lake .

VII. The prosperity of the once mosquito ridden Black Lake,                                        brought crops and food for the new inhabitants                                                               and they knelt in devotion and holy admiration                                                              while the Ottawa headed to northern habitats.

VIII. All seemed providentially well in the Kankakee Marshes                                               for the seemingly inexhaustible                                                                                          birds, fish, fox, and the seemingly inexhaustible                                                               desires of hunting and fishing clubs and English starches,                                                    the swamp providing Chicago with food and decorative plumage                                         for high society hunters headed to the fields called                                                        Marshall and the Gold Coast farces.

IX. Phosphorus flowed freely from the farms to the                                                         ever blackened Black River                                                                                               into Lakes Macatawa and Michigan,                                                                                 both native names facing desecration’s arrow laden quiver.

X. Drain the unsightly, unhealthy Kankakee Marsh with the monster steam dredge           and sell the reclaimed land for forty times its original worth in dollars and cents.              Illinois be damned said Indiana, dam it at Momence and remove the rock ledge;                  the capitalists are getting edgy about their leverage.                                          .

XI. The blast at Momence didn’t drain what was then the resistant ditch,                           but there was a constant assault from farms and the corporate rich                        effluence flowing into the Black Lake, hopefully, they prayed,                                               dark enough to be unnoticed and so it was as the unaware                                          people prayed in their churches on the town square.

XII. A ninety-mile ditch, a scar upon the upper mid-west earth,                                             a nod to regressive progress rebirth,                                                                                  the only thing missing upon the waters was the fire                                                            of an Ohio lake’s death before its miraculous  rebirth.

XIII. Martha, the last passenger pigeon, passed over,                                                       before Phoenix would rise, never again was seen to hover.

XIV. Chicago found fish and fowl afar for many a downtown, upscale pad.                      “The marsh land is Mother Nature’s kidneys,”  the woman said;                                       the organ keeps rising from the parched, farmland dead of living                                thriving things, the liver shaped swamp is still celebrating.

XV. Every time it rains, they now know                                                                              there have to be kidneys to filter and livers to clean the flow                                               into the lake to make Black Lake flow                                                                                 a little bit less black in order to go.

XVI. The Kankakee, Potawatomi and the Ottawa listen                                                       to the songs of the swamps. The organs bellow.                                                              The Kickapoo hear the symphony which sounds so mellow.                                           The first violin tunes up the musicians who listen

XVII. while the flora and the fauna who sit in the second balcony                                        head back down stream to the seats nearest                                                                      the orchestra’s watery, verdant valley.