THE NEW WORLD

Above our heads on the left
hemisphere of our hopes,

biotite & silverwoods, that’s what
we’ll name them. And this outcropping

& this small, dark, twisting line beneath
& those mills we’ll build on its banks

& the disagreements we’ll construct
in our cabins—there’s plenty of future

to figure it out. First lets sizzle deer.
Next pick ticks off one other’s necks.

We are sunburned. We are sweating.
We are laboring & we are labored.

Still, what lies beyond
those snapped branches? Can we assume

a valley of quicksand won’t make
off with our bodies? We only have

our intuition, our dumb unfounded
faith. It’s good enough for me

to lose two toes to a wolverine
to defibrillate my life—that machine

I know comes long after I’ve ceased.
So what? I’ll have children, they’ll have children,

cube that four times & we arrive
at this street—its line of cobblestone

homes, its tricycles left in the rain.
On a weathered, splintered porch swing

one neighbor rumors to another.
So right we named this Hermitage.