Just because I never could know it never
Meant it wasn't out there, molding my past,
A sculptor who knew exactly what the end
Had to look like. What meditation never quite
Achieved, how that which it intended
To reject would save it in the end. A shape
Snaked out of processes, shaking, shaking.
As an individual, it claimed, I have not
Passed altogether unnoticed by change.
So many voices, each haunted by earlier
Talk back and forth across the corpses
That first uttered them. Language is
Plagiarism. But is it also dictation
From the unseen to be? There was a parade
On Canada Day, a tiny town's parade
Through a village in which fewer
Than two hundred humans claimed
Permanent residence. There were visitors,
Mostly from the village just up the road,
Partly from wherever, but even so,
Maybe half the town was in the parade
While the other half cheered. And already
We know that if there is to be another
Parade next year, some of us will have
To plan and survive. That's why we planned
And survived in the past, after all. We could
Feel tomorrow reaching back to make us.
The bagpipes blared the Black Watch,
Twelve older men strolling in kilts,
And the small children followed on foot
Or on bicycles, followed by festive classic
Cars in their turn, manufactured fifty, sixty
Years ago for precisely this occasion.
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