Locals

They peopled landscapes casually like trees,

being there richly, never having gone there,

and whether clanning in cities or village-thin stands

were reticent as trees with those not born there,

and their fate, like trees, was seldom in their hands.

Others to them were always one of two

evils: the colonist or refugee.

They stared back, half disdaining us, half fearing;

inferring from our looks their destiny

as preservation or as clearing.

I envied them. To be local was to know

which team to support: the local team;

where to drop in for a pint with mates: the local;

best of all to feel by birthright welcome

anywhere; be everywhere a local...

Bedouin-Brython-Algonquins; always there

before you; the original prior claim

that made your being anywhere intrusive.

There, doubtless, in Eden before Adam

wiped them out and settled in with Eve.

Whether at home or away, whether kids

playing or saying what they wanted,

or adults chatting, waiting for a bus,

or, in their well-tended graves, the contented dead,

there were always locals, and they were never us.

Source: Landscape with Chainsaw (W. W. Norton and Company, Inc., 2001)