...more

at the mountains there at the Alberta end, the source of the road): miscegenation’s

the longest nuance, the longest-lasting open secret

(in old B.C., Gov. Douglas was also “a man of color,” “a west Indian

of racially mixed parentage” out at the end of a pier in Victoria, welcoming,

“creole,” pragmatic




2.
The past is a skein of rocks.

The past is water.

The past is tree’d.

The past is a list of houses.

The past is a fat metaphor sitting down to dinner.

The road is so rocky & so long (the song repeated)

the explanations got dense on their own:

the past names nothing anyplace:

sites got pre-empted:

at the river-landing the field name verges on the day name:

at the river-landing’s the place where the river’s “noble” in a description of it there—

the river’s aimless self & the portage trail are something else, one goes

off into the trees




2.5
A real word for the talk between Europeans traveling far afield, our little palaver,

and the Africans themselves, some story “intended to charm or beguile”:

tell me it’s creolized, tell me that it’s a bridge between designations.

No story gets elucidated in the song & no one talks or waves from the stage: hands

& the lips too stay on the horn, that’s human nature.




2.7
Names arise from locations, the metaphor comes from water (what water does),

is the verb for that kind of arrival, the verb for location. There’s no remote source

to any of it & you never know how consequence will appear or seem to take place

here or here or here (being described as arrival)—




3.
The water there goes on & on like nobody’s business,

bounding water, furthering water, eating the heart

of water, water drains & edges in,

the gouge of water at the bottom-most levels,

a bridge waiting at the bottom of each hill the road descends,

centerless water but with an edge,

that trill to it, an osmotic line, jagged & minute & strange,

no word for the way blood will tell, the edge

of some line disappeared out in the water