toponym 5

the North, a medium-tall scrub

at eye level, the other layers flowing

into and out of

the poem

but for now, the moment

is this line of willows, second-growth

awareness

burned-over areas,

Labrador tea against the thigh

and a rustle of being

scrub birch, black spruce,

listening for connection

the thin tree cover wetland

buzzes away the afternoon drowse

soaks though shoes,

holds you here

toponym 4

contingencies blend and/

or collide and the root structures

                             flex with input

the political economy

of the space is a             constant

negotiation of flow

the energy of a word’s

motion across paths

of light, water,

generosity

the name of the place is

consumed: chewed and changed,

shit on the road,

washed into a gully,

reorganized

in transition moments or/

and ecotone zones the shift is

a turn and sway and knows

nothing of revolution

the needs of this area

will be met

toponym 2

maps lose us
in their          accurate
lines, boundaries of own and
out and here
there and when it was

this separation--the gap
of space and standing
             (a glance around
              for others there too
(and love         love for
you placing yourself
all your relations
defining the next
step, the next
meal          time is land

the measures are story
the place neural
           inaccuracies scrounging for survival

Blockade 4

dawn, prescient, bulldozer      |       the flow of resources go also through our mind                                           |              cardboard boxes and broken crates on fire; three white-tails further down                                  the ditch            |               first, what family’s land               | the road, the pipe, the                             terminal, the tanker, the destined port, the profit—all going away and leaving       |                              resting crouched on the ground, feet planted, listening to the sounds of small creatures,                           the air, the rich smell of hoolhghulh powering the ravine, the trickle of water everywhere,                      the place is not numbers, the place is not yours           |         a tourniquet would seem so                      enticing too                  |               enbridging v.  :   to make a leap in logic that dismisses                            all other points of view           |        “nation-building” the minister’s claim staked          |                         what else is a 1991 Civic for              |                 named Tehwehron, named MacBlo                          Brutalist in 1993              |                  this passive act of war, this bodied word