5

Not so long ago
Pilgrims carved out spaces

Where they swim
Today in backyards.

Their voices fill the air
Over my fence.

On my own square of green,
I watch the quiet planes

Crossing heaven’s blue
Through treespaces

Soft bright giants
Parting air like water

By a wooden ship, how long ago?
Various turns of the wheel and brighter clothes

Bring them to their driveways
More relaxed, but I hear their ageless

Voices like birds released
From the dim cloisters of history

Across fences: not so long ago
Then, high-tide of pilgrims settling in

Pools around the waters of
North America,

Cutting through the brown and green
Channeling rivers into hoses

(The world sucked down
To manageable sizes)

Bluewhitegold mixed with eternal
Brown and green, grafted onto city grids.

Marines in the subway
Wear traditional uniforms.

A black-and-white photograph
Is not an artifact,

But a document: as the door closes
I see a child on her father’s knee

And know this has happened
Many times, many days, again.

We are not so far from the dead of yesterday.
We are the dead of tomorrow.

Lights on the train
Or in human valleys,

Are half brain powered,
Are half the fire that was always there,

Lighting our way through oceans of gritty midnight
To wake up in beds and wooden walls

And go to our pearl-blue swimming pools.

That oyster, thrown into the
Cloister, the discarded Indian.

But there are garbage heaps
You pass on trains

That you cannot see from planes,
And the moon is the same and your pale voice.

You say: let us laugh today, before we join the thousand yesterdays,
We are already part of the endless journey.