From Maine to Florida

Mind you I have miles to go before I sleep

and miles to go

and miles

and who knows

where they lead,

but here in Florida, now,

I am living

for the first time in my life

with no family nearby

even as I plot

in vain,

to change that later in the year,

and I wonder if I can stand it,

if I can stand on ceremony

and live my life 

this way,

the way I always wanted it,

the way I never wanted it

after my niece,

the way that gives me so much time

but takes so much away,

the distance where love is,

the space that should not exist

cannot be traversed

even in a phone

adequately,

this migrant heart,

this migrant soul,

lost in the byways of life,

I suppose,

like anyone else,

the true American dream,

that hope that somewhere on the horizon

there will be something that might satisfy...

From Virginia to Maine

The last time I lived in Maine

is also the happiest time

I've ever lived there,

a miracle season

I shared with my niece,

traveling a mobile home,

roadways to parks,

around the park itself,

sometimes just playing with the sand

left there from the winter months

and never collected,

or the puddles left by rain

or the soccer balls left outside

or the model homes

we could waste time inside

or thew families who would let us play with them,

or the snow,

or the bounteous snow,

or that time we lost heat

and gained layers,

the pond I named in her honor,

since it was never given one...

This was also the last time to date

I've gotten to spend time

with my nephews there,

the trips down to Freeport,

free of care,

knowing how much they loved

spending time with me,

which I still find

unaccountable.

From Florida to Virginia

The other life my sister shared with me

was the family I found

in Virginia,

which I treasure to this day

and always will,

while living in an RV

that was at that point

anchored in one spot.

There I made friends

with a homeless man

who lived in a tent

and once swung a sword

at the feet of someone,

which sadly remains

the only anecdote

of any kind

with a sword

I can share.

From Maine to Florida

The first time I went to Florida

changed my life forever,

the first time I took responsibility

for a young child's life,

not just any child's

but my niece,

and that was a journey

in and of

itself.

Story for another time;

story of a lifetime.

From Colorado to Maine

And then I headed

back to Maine,

where I recouped some fortunes

and watched my mother die,

and it's still mostly the latter

that defines this period,

the road to a different era,

where all roads lead,

really.

From Massachusetts to Colorado

In contrast,

Colorado Springs

always had the instinct

to swallow me whole,

regardless of how hard I tried,

and I lived there

longer than anywhere else

except home

and now here in Tampa,

so this is from considerable experience,

not vague transitory impression

or transient reductionism.

I went there with hope,

where hope would spring eternal,

and maybe it was disappointment

that defined the outcome.

...Then again,

I never did appreciate

just how many bookstores

there were there.

Perhaps

my vagaries

are a purgatory.

From Maine to Massachusetts

The first time I truly lived somewhere

other than home

was in Burlington, Massachusetts.

The day before I headed out,

I have no problems admitting

I cried.

But it was there,

really,

I truly began to appreciate

getting to discover

what there was to find

in new environs.

I still like to believe

I found a lot of what was available

around me,

not just that spot

where the Founding Fathers hid,

or the house owned by that loyalist,

or the reservoir,

not even the remnant of Victoria Station

(which I ridiculously sing about to this day)

...All of it, basically.

I made that place home.

Madawaska

In yon olden days

before the crush for absolute efficiency,

my dad's job

had him on the road

virtually indefinitely,

the reason we moved to Maine,

so he could make trips

to places like Madawaska

and it would seem

slightly more reasonable,

but while he was gone

it never really occurred to me

at the time

that he had a whole life

until he talked about it years later,

and recently

I took some notes,

recording familiar anecdotes,

such as the priest who mistook him for a priest

because of the suitcase he took to mass one day.

Someday I make the trip

to Madawaska.

From Maine to Maine

The haul up to Orono

was still long, mind you,

but it was considerably shorter

than the one to Erie,

and incidentally,

logged in most of the time

I've personally

spent behind a wheel

(and also by far my favorite).

In some alternate life

I ended up living in Bangor,

which by the way

ought to rhyme

with "bang her,"

not the way

I always pronounced it.

From Maine to Erie

My dad's job literally used to be

traveling long distances,

once we got to Maine,

all the way to Madawaska,

so when he started to complain

about the trip to Erie,

you knew it was a long slog.

My oldest brother

was the one

who initiated those trips

when he was accepted

to Mercyhurst,

but I spent my freshmen year there, too,

but my dad,

who by the way

spent many years

occasionally making the trip

down to New Jersey

so we could hang out

with our favorite relatives,

finally had enough of that,

and so that came to an end.

From Maine to Rhode Island

In my first decade

we traveled back to Rhode Island

so often

it was a regular way of life

to spend long stretches of time

on the road.

We visited my mom's dad

and her family

but also my dad's

over in nearby Blackstone,

which later it was made clear

in the short walks we could take

from one to the other,

which might be

one of the secret origins

of why I walk so much

today.

From Rhode Island to Maine

I'm pretty sure

it was 1983

when the Laplumes packed up

and moved to Maine.

Like my mother's side,

we lived in Rhode Island,

and although I don't remember

except the plastic Budweiser mug my dad used to have,

much about living in Rhode Island,

I remember packing the moving van

and heading off to Maine,

moving into the apartment in Lewiston,

the whole process

of the house of Dumas Street,

which was virtually empty

when we got there,

being built

from the ground up

(and the beer cans,

and the smell of beer

those cans left

in their wake).

They always say

you can't rely 

on the early memories

of the young,

but they exist.

Maine Before Maine

I've never been good enough

at listening to the stories

my family tells

about family history,

and I'm forever beating myself up

about this.

I've listened to my dad's stories

countless times,

about how his dad

used to come up to Maine

to fish.

This was before our family,

my family,

moved to Maine.

My dad grew up in Massachusetts;

when I've tried to research

his family tree,

I think I find his missing grandfather

in Maine,

and really,

this isn't so mysterious;

Maine used to belong

to Massachusetts,

after all,

and they're both snug up in New England,

which people in New England

have a much different idea about

than probably anyone else

in the country.

But still,

on the intimate scale,

it's interesting to think

of the prehistory

sitting there,

wondering if it ever occurred

to my grandfather

so live in Maine,

the way his son would,

the way I did,

and will perhaps,

the heart ever fond

of previous things,

again.

The last time we spoke about it,

he said they fished

on an Indian reservation,

which probably means

Penobscot.

I'll have to wait

or outright ask,

which lake.

Anyway, 

this is to say,

even if your memory

struggles to grasp

the details,

try and listen

when your family speaks

about its history.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Anyone taking a deep dive

into my poetry

will know

I hold Robert Pirsig

in considerable esteem;

there has never been a philosopher

who has held greater fascination

for me.

He wrote two books,

both of them personal journeys,

the first of which

still holds cult status

as he tries to explain

his relationship with his son

through motorcycles,

something we still mistake

as the realm

of roving gangs in leather

with fancy club names

and possibly undeserved reputations.

Pirsig was a scholar,

the last of a previous breed,

who talked of chautauquas,

a more civilized version

of later hippy culture

that perhaps greater emphasized

the culture aspect,

a circus for the mind,

not hallucinogenic

but expanding its potential

to learn,

what we now think

only institutions behind walls

can provide.

Sometimes you lose something

by locking it away permanently

somewhere.

Pirsig may have struggled

to reach his conclusions

but it was worth it.

Oh, it was worth it.

And the freedom he found

was, and still is,

out there.

Blue Highways

In college

I discovered and began to read

the travelogs of William Least Heat-Moon,

his journeys

by van

boat

large scale

and small,

across America,

his piercing into the communities

where he found regular people

who didn't mind sharing their lives with him

and in term, 

with his readers.

I kind of think

there'd be a better bond

between us

if more people

shared these blue highways

with him

and each other.

Route 66

So prevalent

was the casual driving vacation

when people just wanted

to vacation in their car

before destinations were something to reach

that roads were covered in attractions,

not the morbid curiosities

roadtrippers will know today,

but the treasures 

of Route 66,

where communities formed,

where today

only ghost towns exist.

A short lament.

The Highway Robbers

By highway robbers,

I don't mean metaphorically speaking,

or highways,

but the classic bandits

like Jesse James

who scoured the railways

and looted trains

of their precious cargo,

whose fetes of daring

made infamy

famous,

romanticized

in pop culture

the way we've kind of desperatyely sought

in fiction

these last couple decades

since no one 

is interested

in the real world

anymore

(leaving the outlaw's descendants

into the social media

of the anonymous horde).

Make of that what you will.

The Railroad Barons

Another thing

difficult to recall

would be

how the railroad barons

were the real estate giants

of their day,

when real estate

was the real estate

of those putting down all those tracks,

buying up land

along those lines

out from under folks

to develop not cities

but a whole country.

Even the Pinkertons existed

because of these guys,

watching out for saboteurs

and other intrigue

the way later eras

would look at everything else.

And now

all this exists

only in cliffhanger fiction.

The Horse, the Train, and the Car

One of my favorite factoids

is that horses aren't

indigenous

to the Americas,

that an animal

we associate

so closely

with our lands

was a migrant, too.

(Although really

in the final analysis,

everything is.)

And anyway,

what so seldom gets acknowledged

is just how much space

there is

in the United States,

how we tend

like so many countries

to fixate

on the mass population centers

and minimize the sparse,

even denigrate those citizens

as inconsequential,

backwards,

which is funny,

and ironic,

and in all other ways

a curious way

to interpret them,

since both the rich and the poor

dream of ample land

in which to dwell,

and it's only in cities

where land is scarce,

is always at a premium,

and where expansion

never seems to be

enough.

A digression.

So when they were introduced,

horses came in handy,

and then in the 19th century,

rail lines revolutionized

...everything,

as radical as the horses ever were,

and then the car showed up soon after

(and really, not so much later, planes,

but aside from leisure and business,

their immediate applications

serve different ends),

and cars, more than anything,

came to dominate,

at one point so heavily promoted

they shaped the entire nation,

redefined everything,

a car nation,

in tarnation.

One can't properly understand

the migrant culture,

here,

without considering these cars.

Also, just as a sidenote,

just try and picture

any of this

without the invisible truckers,

the moving vans

and the ones

who spend their lives

hucking all our goods;

you really only notice

if they take forever,

with all your possessions

or somehow lose something,

never to be explained,

the true poltergeists

of America...

And Its Companion, Too

Even when it's actually brought up,

the fact that France

has an identical statue

as a bossom companion

never seems to strike anyone

as meaning anything.

No one posts pictures

in France

of this sibling rival,

no one breathes significance

into its existence,

no one says it means something

to the people of France

as ours does to us

and to the world,

to the migrants

it inspires,

and the nation it represents.

I always kind of wonder

about that.

A Gift from France

A myth like Ellis Island

needs a figurehead

like any other,

and this one turned out to be

the Statue of Liberty.

France sent it over

in recognition

of the revolution

and our special relationship

that endured

theirs

and other such turmoils,

but the statue

ended up meaning

nothing at all

about France

and everything

about the constant stream

of migrants,

the tired and poor,

yearning

to breathe free.

When someone wrote a song

about her shaking a fist,

that's when a lot of things

really started

to fall apart.

Ellis Island

Eventually

there had to be

a myth built up

about this too,

and that one was called

Ellis Island,

where all these migrants

were processed,

some with their names

changed forever,

which is the most common story

you will hear today,

but really,

this orderly, rational approach

is what most Americans think of

today,

and I'm sure it's as true

as any other story.

And Many Lands, Too

And from many lands,

all the lands you can

imagine,

from all these lands

they came,

they just never stopped,

not just the Irish,

not just the Chinese,

not just the Germans

who brought us our 

obsession

with beer,

all lands,

all lands

somehow brought their peoples

to us,

and we called ourselves

a melting pot,

they all traveled,

across oceans,

across the continent,

finding the places

they might fit,

even when it seemed

they didn't.

They just kept coming.

But from the North

Ah,

but from the north,

but from the north they came

all the same,

they came from the north

and that is where

I come in,

my ancestors,

who had once traveled

and traveled again

from France

and I don't know,

Viking raids before that,

but at any rate,

from French Canada,

they came

in the midst

of persecution,

same as so many others,

a litany of immigration

throughout the ages,

at the turn of the 20th century,

two separate families,

settling on the border

of two states,

growing up together

and finally seeing

their children wed,

and their language lost

to a new country

that still had little room enough

for them.

Never the North

Try as they might

they never could

add the Canadian lands

to their claims,

in whichever wars

they tried,

and they tried,

and they tried!

and eventually

that's the reason

Benedict Arnold

went down in history

as a villain

and poor Dolley Madison

had to flee

the destruction

of the White House,

and if neither

is cost enough

for you?

Then I pity you,

sir.

The Union Spreads

They called it

eventually

Manifest Destiny,

the United States

adding more and more

to itself

across the whole divide

until it claimed

both coasts

and more besides,

until there was even Alaska,

even Hawaii,

and other territories,

until there were those

who called it

an empire,

in case

you believe

in irony.

The Peculiar Institution

If the natives

had agreed

to subject themselves

to working under

the white peoples,

no black person

would have seen

the New World

across an ocean

of heartache,

stored up pickled

like mindless commodities

until brought to market

and sent along

a system of slavery

without humanity,

to be sold up and down the south

with the chance to run away,

caught, sent back,

escape, flee all the way north

and still find

that the prejudices

against a people

in an uncomprehending culture

found it difficult

to reconcile

these migrant souls

against their will,

that peculiar institution

and the once and forever

original sin

of these lands.

Remember the Alamo, Too

Visitors today,

perhaps,

don't really see

the mission behind the mission,

the small stature

of the structure

not so impressive

as the legacy

left behind

by the tale

of the Alamo,

that siege

between Texans

and Santa Anna,

who in Mexico

was not quite

as the defenders saw him,

as they fought

for what would become

the largest territory

in the continental states.

Boonesborough

Practically speaking,

there really was no difference

in how Daniel Boone lived

and the natives around him.

That's the truth

we like to omit

from the record

when we talk about

how life played out

once things 

had settled down,

and it was people like Boone

setting the stage

for what was to come,

not the mass migrations

but the integrations

into the land

by common people.

Well,

maybe not Boone.

Probably still best

to not call him

common.

Which for some

is a shame.

Fountain of Youth

It's said

that the Spanish

were driven to distraction

allowing themselves

to believe

the stories

they encouraged 

the natives to tell

about the Fountain of Youth,

feeding into

their lust

for exploring deep

into the heart

of this new world.

Or maybe

it was just someone's way

of explaining

to someone back home

why they were away

so long,

a bedtime story

in words

a child

could understand.

Lewis & Clark and York & Sacagawea

One of the stories

they don't really tell 

anymore

(and it shows)

is the survey mission

of Lewis & Clark

and how it drew

on all the available resources

including a black man named York

and another native girl,

Sacagawea.

I grew up

pronouncing Sacagawea

one way

but in recent years

it seems it's changed

and now I love that one

so much

I still pronounce it that way,

even if her name

doesn't come up

anymore.

Which is a shame.

I'm not sure

a more American story

can be found.

Stuck Her Neck Out, Too

If you subtract

Columbus

from the mythic origins

you still have

Pocahontas,

but even she

is subject

to revisionism;

her own people

now suggest

their stories

tell something very different

about that time

she saved the life

of John Smith.

They say she didn't save him at all,

that it was just a ritual

that dumb ol' John Smith

just didn't bother

to understand,

another in a long series

of sleights 

to a culture,

to a whole continent

of cultures

white people

could never bother

to respect.

This of course 

would have nothing to do

with "King Philip"

or the wars

fought between

these reconciled peoples

a generation or so

later.

Is it really

such an onerous story

to have

about a girl

saving the life

of a boy

she maybe kind of liked

despite their differences?

I don't think so.

People tend

to like those sorts of things,

brings people

together.

Which I suppose

is the point.

Croatoan

One of the enduring mysteries

of English colonizing

is probably also

one of the dumbest things

history still records:

How the hell we can't just admit

that the answer to the riddle

of what happened

to those missing colonists

is that they starved, died,

and absorbed into that

"mysterious word,"

Croatoan,

which is to say,

the natives

living around them.

I mean,

c'mon.

And the Lands Red, Too

This isn't to say

that there weren't

calamities

as a result

of the confluence

of native and European folk,

that the land did not run red

with blood

from the moment they met,

the land anguished periods

in which disparate cultures

tried to reconcile each other

to very different existences;

admitting one thing

should not negate another,

even if that is what recent observers

have tried so hard

to say.

If you miss rhymes

in my work

that's what you won't find

in recent histories,

too.

Sail the Ocean Blue

Another of the narratives

we are too eager

to jettison

is the achievement

of a man

who refused

to let a little accident

get in the way

of history.

In 1492

Columbus sailed the ocean blue.

So the rhyme always went,

not about Vikings

or the Chinese,

which is not to say

the Vikings

or the Chinese

didn't make the journey too,

and earlier,

but that they didn't change

the course

of history.

Columbus did that.

Up the Ziggurat...and Down

Some

of the narrative horror

we still struggle against

is the opulence

of some of the cultures

the Europeans discovered

when they arrived,

such as those

who built

the New World ziggurats

and forced sacrifices up

and then down

as if there is something

worth celebrating

other than the artifice

in all that.

Against All Mankind

The perception

we are to have

of the natives now

is that they were at peace

with all the land,

and that may be so

but in terms of relations

between each other

they seem to have been set

against all mankind,

which was why

it was so easy

for the Europeans

to maneuver around them,

because they could never work together

at least not in large enough scale

for long enough,

to exert any real

opposition.

This is the picture

of the march 

ever onward

and perhaps

it's time

to admit

that this is how it was

and not let the opposition itself

continue to define

the results.

Among the Natives

One of the things

people are careful to explain

about who we now call the natives

is that they had no concept

of land ownership

until the Europeans came.

This is to say

they were nomadic,

the first residents

to make a habit

of wandering,

restless,

unable to stay

in one place

for very long.

Crossing Strait Lines

The country's inhabited origins

seem to start

from the Bering Strait.

This is conjecture

but it's probably accurate,

which also means

all the peoples

across both Americas

had to do

a lot of walking

to begin populating

these lands.

It's kind of

one of the definitions

of commitment

if you ask me.