Newmarket VII

So, I wonder where that leaves me now.

I’m just sitting.

I suppose I’ve become boring.

You don’t have to listen to me.

But I swear I was once wild.

I’m pretty sure.

I had a different name.

I feel it deep down under the grey.

I know I was energy.

And now here I am.

Newmarket.

Newmarket VI

I used to be everything.

That’s how people found me—

a forest trail meeting flowing water.

Or thereabouts.

I was a part of everything.

Enjoying.

What did they used to call me?

I’m not sure there is anyone left

in the world

who knows my secret name.

Maybe nobody.

Maybe not even me.

People people people.

Where is my green belt?

It is hard to find anything around here

with so many people.

I think it is sunny.

If only I could see through this fog.

It smells funny.

I seem to recall the wind telling me

about a fog a long time ago,

when it came in traveling from the sun rising.

Wind never said anything about the smell,

about the way you have to breathe more

because one inhale just isn’t as filling as it once was.

I have the sense I used to travel more.

Maybe that’s not true.

My daughter goes all over in her SUV.

But things now seem confined.

Limits keep expanding into fields,

hoses and houses and houses,

but I’m more locked down than ever. 

Newmarket Part V

I’m pretty sure Newmarket

was a 1950’s housewife

turning to the woman next door

after surveying the farm houses,

rows of corn in the distance,

bungalows closer up,

sleepiness,

and asked

‘Gladys, was I always like this?

I seem to think I used to be a little more wild.

Maybe some deer and berry bushes

and water running on its own course.

I think perhaps, over time

I’ve lost my nature.

I think there used to be more life to me.

I’m not quite sure what happened.’

Newmarket—me—I would say this

before handing over a jello salad

walking towards the clothes line,

ready to do the starching.

Newmarket Part IV

Oh but the Rebellion was fun.

That made me think that I hadn’t lost my spark.

Yelling and banging on tables.

Compact!

Gold carried to the river and buried

To keep it safe.

Don’t tell—

I took it.

What fool buries pretty shiny things like that?

Too bad it was over in the blink of an eye

and snap of a noose.

Too bad indeed.

And maybe then I became less wild.

I suppose it was tolerable

in the grand scheme of things.

Same for the train.

A different type of noise and who cared?

Shops, canals,

drugs and malls and highways

and then I forget.

After so many streaks of movement on a slow shutter speed

it becomes hard

to reach the mind back.

Did I used to be more than an economy?

What was my secret name—

the name given at birth

to save me from death and illness?

Names are power.

You don’t know my name?

Death can’t find me.

When I start monthly bleeds,

When I can take on my own demons,

Then we can say the name out loud. 

Newmarket III

Part III

I live in a building named for a man—

always men with these new people!

I think he owned a newspaper

Or a mill

Or something someone thought was important.

I might have met him sometime before he died.

The nurses here say that’s not possible,

but they don’t know how old I am,

so how can they say?

They say I’m as old as the hills.

I seem to think I recall when the hills were just babies

Babies wrapped in short green grass

And swaddled close to the earth.

People would come through me then,

traveling from water to water.

Did it so often they made a trail.

Maybe we could have been friends

if I had cared at all,

but I really didn’t.

I was too busy just being myself.

What do I care about the mills

and distillery

and rows of carrots they forced from the earth?

It was a little pinch in my side,

nothing more.

Newmarket

Part II

I forget the name I had before.

My name now doesn’t fit.

Newmarket.

Ugh. How awful.

More like gluttonous slime of spiritually devoid

self-involved illusion

of economic success.

That’s what I’d call what we’ve all become.

Or something like that.

Oh, maybe I’m being cantankerous.

I’m sure there have been good times too.

And good people.

Small children playing at school.

High school students volunteering to sit with me for 20 minutes—

I wish they weren’t afraid of shocking me with their stories.

I’d like to know who these people are

But they just tell me that they study hard

And want to be accountants.

You can’t really know a person who lies so hard

Even if they believe it themselves.

Newmarket

Part I

I remember quite a bit

even though some of the facts

are fading into Monet feelings.

Not so crisp as they once were

Water colours don’t suit

How I see.

I feel as though I used to be different.

But things don’t happen over night, no.

The changes were fun.

People coming to my tallest tree to trade.

The people I knew getting pots and beads

from the new people, just giving over a few furs.

And they would have fun and a spirit, a new spirit,

would descend

and it was different from anything we had ever felt.

And then I suppose on thing led to another.

Houses, dams, saloons, highways,

and here I am.