At The Confluence of Rivers
Dec 17 2010


Ft. Charlotte wasn’t really a disappointment.
No, there were no palisades, no log cabins,
no re-enactments, like Disneyland.
But I could tell men had left their mark
on-and off
for hundreds of years
in this New World wilderness.

At the confluence of rivers
at the end of a long portage,
this was once the outer limit
of exploration,
connected by a tenuous thread
of blood and sweat
and manual labour
to the civilized centre
of life.

At the confluence of rivers
near a Great Lake port,
this could have been a great city
like Minneapolis
New York, New York.
It was a gentleman’s chivalry
to call it “Charlotte,”
after some virgin princess
a patron, perhaps.
And a grand ambition
to call it “Fort.”
Because the frontier would quickly move on
leaving Ft. Charlotte deserted,
stillborn
in its virgin forest.
Where there was nothing as rich as gold
to hold them,
the fabulous Orient
luring them on.

Standing here, I feel as if I had stepped back in time
in my own small city
at the confluence of rivers
where a forest once stood.
Where by chance, or larceny
settlement took.
How it , too, would look
if you lopped-off
the girdered buildings,
the bungalows
on cul-de-sacs, and circles.
Stripped away
the concrete surface
and grid-locked streets.
Plucked out
ornamental trees, and well-kept gardens,
roughed up
manicured lawns.
And underneath
pulled cables, tubes, and conduits,
replaced
the blasted rocks.

Leaving wilderness, like Ft. Charlotte,
as hard a journey as it ever was.
A walk back in time,
when all our cities
were modest clearings
in a vast unbroken forest.
When an entire continent
felt impenetrable, closed.

Which you’d think would make me feel claustrophobic,
over-towered by trees
underbrush, entangling my feet.
Except that suddenly
I was in an alternate future
in the middle of a 6-lane street,
gleaming black walls
50 stories high
crowding the sidewalk,
angry horns
bearing down on me.
The Ft. Charlotte, that might have been.

Where, like every city, I cannot breathe,
sprawling beyond the horizon
traffic crawling by.
Desperately seeking an edge
I can step out over,
and hear myself think.



There is a long hike, at Grand Portage, near the Minnesota/Ontario border. The highlight is a spectacular waterfall, the Cascades. But for some reason, the trail is very poorly marked, and the more obvious path leads to another site, grandiosely called “Ft. Charlotte”. Not much to see; but I’ve missed the cut-off a few times, and found myself there. And each time, the germ of this poem was always lurking somewhere in my subconscious, but never managed to get written.

How, back in the day, this place called Ft. Charlotte was as civilized as it got. Minneapolis or Thunder Bay or Duluth either didn’t exist, or were just as rudimentary. So what alchemy chose them to become the cities we know, and left the ambitious “Fort” to be nothing but a plaque in a modest clearing?

And how would it feel for someone 400 years ago to be standing on the original site of one of these modern cities, and then suddenly transported into the future? How utterly gobsmacked would he feel? How could someone from 400 years ago even assimilate a tiny bit of the modern world?

And conversely, standing on the site of Ft Charlotte made me feel as if my whole city had been whisked into oblivion, and its original virgin state somehow recaptured. An impossibility, of course; but a tantalizing mental simulation.

Anyway, the poem became a bit of an epic. It kind of reminds me of Gordon Lightfoot’s famous Canadian Railway Trilogy. If it’s anywhere near as good, I’ll be thoroughly pleased.