Underground
Suppose your Grandfather,

metis in Trois Rivieres,

when a man comes up

from Providence

saying: you can come down

there’s work in the velvet factory: food and pay.

Bring your boy. It’s better than the Jeffrey mine

This is easy

I’ll take you down on Wednesday

I’ll give you everything you need.
In the census of narrow laneways

Your grandfather gives his name: Telesphore

Which means bringing fulfillment

and bearing fruit. All untrue.

He says: At least in the mine you could come up for air

Each lung sapped black with the velvet mud

of the lower Pawtuxet. Which means

little falls, accident, lost man.

All of it true.
His boy carries him home.
Mineral Rights
I’ve got a birch trunk for a hip bone

thighs like willow,

one metatarsal pointed south.

You are low wheat, a sunlit rodeo

next to the Telluride mine.
And the next day dairymen

blocked the roads to Spain.

When I walked up Cadillac barefoot

the man watching the gate said:

I was a fisherman, but that’s done now.

All the big pines, down.

His name stitched like planets

each verb a consolation

and here, cruise ships in autumn

spring oleander

the deceit-heart of the banksia.

If I keep it honest, this picture includes

the ruin of the world. After the long haul

of sliced logs, the weight of white gold,

the uplift of the oldest sea. 
And on the last day, we see

rock pools filled with

sheep bone, saltbush,

Penelope and all her maidens

shipwrecked in the red earth, a nest of bees.