Old World, New World

Old World, New World, metaphors we made 
for the colonies we outgrew and the colonies 

we set sail for. People say we are at that 
kind of transition again— feeling the world 

we thought we knew splitting open like a seed 
pod under pressure. So much failure, exhaustion, 

uncertainty, and war. Drones fly over gardens, 
tankers barrel through straits on fire. So much 

has changed. Or so much has merely changed
hands. Yet power stays put. Spoils of many 

conquests, we've been trying to survive in
the margins, in the aftermath of the last 

aftermath and the last. Imagine freeing river and
forest and plain from maps into their old names.