Landing

In the form of a carcass, what used to be a canoe waits 
in the underbrush.  Ours is not to deliver it from itself.  

We have landed here after what seems great 
struggle against the current but now that we're pulled up

it seems the kind of place guardian angels are buried
alive, where people go mad from lead poisoning

or sorrow.  Which is worse? The light leaning 
into the clearing in somehow the wrong shape, 

its patterns not its own.  Nowhere's properly barren, 
doesn't work that way: don't flatter yourself 

into thinking that you'll been longed for, 
awaited.  We're heading north, true or other.

The shield up here is green, artifacts pose 
for photographs—axe handle, ruby necklace—

the shaved-animal mountain would cover itself with its hands 
if it could.  We are incurable, always seeking a more sepia way to say it.

Here is what they've done and there, a girl lived 
on a hillside for a summer, sleeping under a railroad 

trestle.  It's the frame of the thing that concerns us, 
all that's left the pine thwarts, some rope, the gunwales and keel 

worried through.  Shall we go further, 
to where islands begin extricating themselves 

from the horizon? Won't you make me a lifetime of Persian carpets 
of cedar and pine? Every year a different shade of green to light to orange 

until they are ready, right flammable.  If I stayed here long enough 
I'd receive weatherstained postcards from myself 

of granite blown raw along the road or its bulbous grey 
knuckling a lake.  Hey there, What makes me 

reckless? Maybe you know.  Write soon—the words blurred 
into you-are-heres, morose ink insects spread 

like the eagles we see each day, in threes, leaving us 
divinations we can't interpret.  Before long I'll hear nocturnes 

from the wolves, the highest wafting of civilization.  
If I drew them they would be death 

leaning far over.  That night we decided to get rid of evil spirits.  It was tough; 
we had come to depend on them in a certain way.  I tried to make up my mind 

to stay, sink between the mad colours of the gneiss and become still 
life, covered in the silks of rain upon rain upon rain.