How to get to the crossroads:

In Waukesha

We don’t think about it very much anymore
but the ghosts of native Indians might
We walk, or alas, drive their ancient trading trails
paved many times over;
even our later inter-urban streetcar tracks
are now out of sight,

buried like their lightly-beaten paths
by time and poured concrete
and newcomers can’t get the gist of traveling downtown
can’t figure these streets out because so many diagonals
cut through strangely, they say

But it was all so simple then
for the woodland people
to follow their spoke-like paths
to the five points trading posts
No doubt

going through thick woods
from their outlying settlements,
intending to live forever in their homeland
upon which they trod so gently

Pioneers built great improvements
upon their sacred burial grounds
and cannons stand in our library park
passing time’s additions, tentatively

muddying the purer water of days
dim to us, unknown
But not to the ghosts
who watched flowing streams
clear away many other silty stirrings
only for a moment hiding customary clarity

We are being watched by these patient spirits
these spector ‘savages’ who knew so much
their way to our downtown
abiding