Watershed and Shield Reminiscence

Amid moonscape railings
cognition drained its basin

one brother was born
on land black from the mine

all ventricles sap and terminate 
a girlish toss of stones into water 
green from copper

welfare
sulphur
apartment

limbs angled and familial as industry
these days without antidote
tumbling into silt

dead and still the water
great-grandfather worked
the old trap-lines

sleek as a grey lip another cadaver lake
ground seepage of acids 
hydrochloric said the railroad

into a highway with horses
using dynamite to clear the shield
a glacier had worn

came after the caribou or smoke
to crack the sky open this caustic history
of moisture

a nest for the river
his horse fell down its bank
into a shattered femur

before the caribou metabolic alleys 
diverged 
into currents and embryos 
crack the sky into a filter of words 
mutagenic

nothing for the horse
but the dynamite
placed it lit
within its mouth
empathic demolition

Lux 
sucrose 
norepinephrine

below the sole
blinking traffic
light in the centre

whether our engine of the possible?
asked this atomic history of silt
in the watershed

of town      an elder
amputee from
the farthest reserve

this lift of waves
recurrent 
from this shed
all water flows north

placed his last
hand on my brow
called upon
Gitchi Manitou

in a memory of sleep
where I am four
and falling through
each level of a house:

there are four corners

piles of clothes

carpets of old smoke

a staircase

mummified

placenta

brittle

slightly flaking

a soft drift

to when the cement floor signals
 

to secure my exit
from poverty