-to travel there-

-We have the blood of the Wampanoag.
But the blood is on our hands-

we went looking for water.

not that which is salted,

which moves inward and outward,

which is driven by the moon's pleasure,
which is driven to by the authority of our fathers,

but water, fresh and still,

not far from where the sunburned, compressed people

who complained of the heat, who traveled to saltwater,

then dog-paddled into the stingers of jellyfish.

so we pedaled our bicycles
eastward to fresh water,

up the hill passing the great holding-tanks
and pumping station of the Waterworks at the Narrows,
leaving the city behind us,

riding into the forest and through the dense

narrow pathways, then doing little of anything
when we reached the water.

but we’d lay-down our bikes

(the kickstands nearly useless to us)

upon the ground of high, cracking

meadow and scrub-grass strewn with rock and stone.
then we'd walk around smoking cigarettes.

the forest of the sweeping Watuppa

Reservation was dense

and its great, freshwater ponds

were laying before us like sheets in burnished metal.

now the city was low at our backs,

disappeared from our line of sight.

we were too young to appreciate the history of this place,—

the latitude and longitude of all that remains here,

that in the 17th century, a young native woman,

Sachem warrior, Weetamoo of the Pocasset Wampanoag

waged war against the English "coat-men"

who step-by-step and with terrible deception

sopped-up her land laying fence by fence
for the holds of their cows and pigs.

and they forced her to run, run for her life,
then to drown in the Taunton River

then stole her body from the river and stuck her head,

severed, to be displayed on a pike as a warning
to others of her nature, at the banks of the steely Taunton.

there were limitations in time allowed to us
by our parents and before the sun would set,

we'd be stuffing our mouths with sweet, "double-bubble"

chewing gum to mask the bitter slick of tobacco

coating our tongues.

to our credit we snuffed our cigarettes on rocks
resting there from the last age of ice,
and tossed the butts into the water,
amused at the "shiners" creeping up for a taste, 

then, straddling our bikes

at the deepening twilight, we rode

from the heights of the Narrows, the drenched Watuppa
once known as a Nation to the great Pocasset Wampanoag,

westward through the long narrow pathways to the steep,

paved road, coasting downward toward our neighborhood 

not far from where the water laid-down fresh and still behind us.

                                                                 Quequechan