Terra Nullius

Sept 24 2019

An Indian summer

is a few warm days

after the first hard frost.

Am I still permitted

to use this word?

With its indelible taint

of the original sin

of the settlers who arrived on this land

imperiously planted their flags

and proclaimed its vastness empty?

This word

that offends geography,

preserving the fallacy

of entire continents

no one had even imagined?

Yet Indian summer

makes me want to go back

before it was colonized,

when First Nations called it home

and ghosted along its trails

stepping gently upon this earth.

Spread a hand-woven blanket

in a faraway forest clearing

under still majestic trees,

a soft dry bed

of needles loosely thatched

and thickly piled leaves.

To bask

in unexpected sun

naked as Adam was.

To lie down at your side, my sun-browned Eve

and let the time pass

unhurried between us.

Eve

a little tame, a little wild,

inhabiting her body

with the natural grace of an animal

strong, and sure, and lithe.

A civilization of two

in the mythological garden

of a well-romanticized past,

the noble savage

and an Eden I very well know

never really existed.

And which, if it did

we would just as surely destroy.