"The Company": A Poem by Jane Piirto. All rights reserved.

The Company

“I have felt a keen longing for my own lands.”

Runo 29 Kalevala

THE COMPANY

Negaunee caves in.

They’re moving Palmer.

Republic used to be a bluff.

Ishpeming has no tax revenues

now the undergrounds have closed.

Tilden Location is now a metropolis.

Cliff’s Drive is blocked off

with open pit low grade iron pellets.

In 75 years

the largest gem in the world,

Jasper Knob,

of jaspillite and hematite

will be an open pit too,

but they don’t call it

strip mining.

Here’s to The Company!

Mr. Mather and his friends

explored and coveted,

they bought and litigated,

claimed from the Chippewa,

and the word went,

New England and Europe

to the famished of famine—

Cornish, Irish, French-Canadian,

Swedes, Norwegians,

Finns and Italians later.

Poor people,

second sons, unmarried daughters

sailed to Ellis, huddled.

Carriage, canal, and railroad

Boat, and hope

carried them to Ishpeming, Michigan,

where their cousins worked.

Housemaids and miners,

housemaids and lumberers,

housemaids and carpenters,

shoemakers, merchants, farmers,

barkeeps and miners

and miners’ sons

sought respectability

in claimed cedar swamps,

bearing

babies and an ethic,

work and not welfare,

damp mines and falling chunks,

the ore to make the autos

to make America

what it is.

Compasses went crazy,

north pointed south

at this iron. Red

dust soiled the sheets,

hand-wrung, hung

on clotheslines frozen

stiff as walls

between workers and bosses,

ore

red mud covered sensible

boots tramping trails

in mosquito-owned woods.

Adventurers became family men,

housemaids housewives,

and there were children,

and hope for the children,

and the Lutheran church,

and the Catholic church,

and the Methodists,

and the streets of taverns,

and The Company,

tentacled.

II.

We are yours, Company.

You pollute with our blessing.

You own the land.

You hired our grandfathers,

our fathers,

brothers, husbands.

You gave us girls college

at Northern—

“teaching is a good job

for a woman”—

you own the land.

Our sons go to Northern too.

They live in Detroit now,

work for the auto companies,

or hamburger franchisers,

teach school,

if they don’t work for you,

’cause The Company pays good

now there’s unions,

and being a miner

is a respectable job,

and we work for you

whatever we do.

III.

My dad died of cancer.

He worked in your shops.

The noise made him deaf.

The Company paid the bills.

My mother is a widow

with a small pension,

now there’s unions.

My husband worked the Empire Mine.

He spit taconite, black ooze on the pillow

for a year after he quit,

but he made good money,

saved up for college.

My cousin’s your accountant.

We are yours, Company.

You showed us the land.

Your land

seduces us—

trout, deer, waterfalls,

clean water, pine woods—

you only pollute a little.

You sent our kids to college.

You helped us own our homes.

We had nothing

when we came.

You own the land

our homes stand on.

You hire us

to move our homes

when you wish

to dig a shaft,

a pit,

a strip.

You own the land,

and jobs

are more important

than land.

We are yours,

wrapped and fenced.

We are your

links in the chain.

Pass it on.

Publication history:

Piirto, J. (1980). The Company. Sing, Heavenly Muse! (5), pp. 13-17.

· (1981). Finnish Americana, IV, p. 71.

· (1983). M. Karni and A. Jarvenpa (Eds.), Finnish American Writers (p. 66). New Brighton, MN: Finnish Americana Press.

· (1983). Postcards from the Upper Peninsula. Pocasse Press.

· (1995). A Location in the Upper Peninsula: Collected Poems, Stories, Essays. New Brighton, MN: Sampo Publishing.

· (2008). Saunas: Poems by Jane Piirto. Woodstock, NY: Mayapple Press.

· (2017). And Here: Women Writing about the Upper Peninsula. Ed. Ron Riekki. Michigan State University Press.