ALL THAT IS CERTAIN IS NIGHT LASTS LONGER THAN THE DAY

Look at your past, how it’s grown.

You’ve known it since it was yea high. Still you,

as you stand now, have never been there. Parts worn out,

renewed, replaced. Though you may bear the same name.

You’re like the joke about the axe.

In time you’ve learned to behave badly isn’t

necessarily to behave out of character. To thine own self

be true. In script above the nation’s chalkboards,

the nation’s talkshows. And not a great idea,

depending. It’s too much for you, I know.

One day your life will be a lake in the high country no one

will ever see, and also the animals there, figures

indistinguishable from ground.

All of time will flow into it.

Leave the child you were alone. The wish to comfort her

is a desire to be comforted. Would you have

her recognize herself buried alive

in the memories of a stranger? Forgo the backroads,

double-wides of friends, and friends of friends …

Some of what you would warn against

has not yet entered her vernacular.

She travels unerringly toward you, as if you are the north.

Between you, a valley has opened.

In this valley a river,

on this river an obscuring mist.

A mist not unlike it walks the morning streets, comments on

the distinction of Ottawa from Hull, Buda

from Pest, what used to be Estuary from what used to be

Empress, the ferry that once ran between them.