In a world colonized by animals, achieved only by the fittest, we ignore the rule of nature and find only pain in forgiveness.

We humiliate ourselves in an effort to reconcile. Thinking better than faith, we submit to ideology, so long as it answers the question we are afraid to hold open.

And the question stays open anyway.

Whose bluff is this, whose marsh, whose watershed, whose second-growth cedar standing in for the first? The deed is filed in one office. The older claim is filed in the land itself, for no paper or even writing existed for them.

I do not know how to hold all of it at once, the history, the grievance, the good-faith ledger that never quite balances, the neighbour who feels unheard on either side. I know only that the bluff does not care who signs the paper, and that this is not an answer, only a place to set the weight down for the length of an afternoon.