American History

We laid our leather boats in a stream,
steered north for bream and bank martin,
fattish brooks and honeyed roots.
We followed the scent of pitcher plants
cast across the river, past 
plumes of bees in orange blooms, 
emerald streamers, hanging moss
where storks at rest, secure in their nests,
tossed upon us tassels of gold, 
what appeared to be various 
species of Gordonia, what the inhabitants call
the White Lily of the Swamp. 

After we came to the land 
of the inhabitants themselves,
holding their jugs in the water-drum of clouds,
waist-high, patient, in fields of floating plants
where trout passed freely,
rainbowed by the force of fresh water,
we removed their phlox-like entrails,
placed their carcasses in forked 
roads of trees, so they appeared as mere
stems, killed by winter frost.

A gift, we thought, from our benevolent god,
the sheen of wet grass in early morning light, like
the minds of those inhabitants, which we had wanted
for our own. As long as this was our dream,
no one would know what was lost.