Always start with poems about places
that sing themselves as if they were a whir
of mid-august heat bugs. Begin each
with words by other people, famous
or should be famous, stoically preserved.
Start them with the things others say
about the curvature that lives must follow
so as to say we are not alone in our time
and these moments all now belong as much
to them as it does to us. Colonel Talbot
and Tecumseh and Hiriam Walker rising
and falling and casting long shadows
upon the prairies and cleared forest. Speak
those words in the only voice given,
one-in-the-same as the crack of ice
against the shore, deep horns calling fog
in the distance, fishflies popping under
foot, and the descent of jetliners across
the border that separates treaty makers
from those that straddle the boundaries
of their inheritance. Repeat it all
because to be alone is to have only land,
and memories of soil and rock are measured
by the passage of cold and warm fronts.
