One could as well have chosen
that life of supermarket carts
junked in the backyard,

I went this morning, this
white arc of year now nearly come whole here,
again to seek those sites

1.
There’s a sign near the waterfront
I think it’s advertising cheer:
says 400 years, virginia spirits. A swig.

A year ago last night, my dead crowd me
an even ceremony
of Jamestown, at the schooner

that brought those first here.
They think: long trip
did not yet know, not the longest part

I want my beard
To be as long as
A road,

The eye must follow form, but from this height,
    I see how softly summer parries weight

The fishermen lug in their nets, the take’s
Too small, the natural’s shunted aside
For derricks busy recouping the wastes

All this was years ago, but how could I forget
the first thing I did when you finally left me
was grow distinctly unlike myself—so distinctly unlike

What was I thinking of (not Tintern
Abbey, that's for sure, more likely you—
mean: we were on honeymoon)

Its pupils (I see them now, violet) were actual holes.

Terrified, one paw raised, trembling on the ciment edge of the threshold, it whispered, down in the snow— blue fluctuating flute.

for Harry Mphanza

We have changed a great many of our colonial place names since independence, but we have kept the name of Livingstone out of a deep respect. —Siloka Mukuni, chief of the Leya People

  At the onset of my ingenious plan, the sun barely shone
            through the mist.
      I struggled with a name to identify the rushes
            of water pouring beside me.