Stockbridge

From Wisconsin before it was Wisconsin
a glacier hauled these stones you stand on.

They traveled on its rubble.

They are the glacier’s spit, its lost hag’s teeth,
the path it garbled on its travel.

In 1880, the Stockbridge, last of the Mohicans
were removed to Wisconsin: The white edict

frozen, impassive as a glacier.
This field, the farm, these gabled houses

all rely upon that absence.
Now you bend into the field to clear it.

You think of frozen fist,
of ice-sheets melting. Glaciers lost

in too-warm early weather.
A west wind blows in from Wisconsin.

Each stone you touch is cold as bone.
As if it holds some trace of spirit.