I’ve already seen two sets of fireworks
one from the back porch and the other
from the bridge where the old Neponset
River flows past two little islands below

There where the sign says it quite clear
this was the very site of first dread mill:
that is gunpowder mill built back then in
1670’s to be supply train for ’King’ Phillip’s

War that ended with Metacomet’s head
on a post in old Plymouth Colony original
English Pilgrim settlement that began by
stealing grave food left as sacrifice to all

Those original inhabitants epidemic killed
just before the settlers ever even arrived
to set up their fragile community by making
alliance with the devastated indigenous

People desperate to use the new neighbors
gunpowder weapons against their very own
longtime enemies in those woodland coasts
while well aware that they must stay awake

To the fact that their new allies, the English
could explode bombs into vulnerable faces.

 

James Van Looy has been a fixture in Boston’s poetry venues since the 1970s. He is a member of Cosmic Spelunker Theater and has run poetry workshops for Boston area homeless people at Pine Street Inn and St. Francis House since 1992. Van Looy leads the Labyrinth Creative Movement Workshop, which his Labyrinth titled poems are based on. His work appears weekly in Oddball Magazine.