my brother calls

we talk about 1491, the book

about how it may well have been

here before the migrants came

now labelled explorers, let’s be clear

they were often soldiers displaced.

spain had ended the moorish centuries

young men surplus to army needs, might

find passage to something new.

we talk about porous borders, the sea

how it flows both ways, and more strongly

up in a curl along the east coast and across

so, we could well have gone there, sometimes

not in conquest, nor for refuge, but in exploration, which

after all leaves lighter marks.