MAPPING I am a coast person       whose only interest in the sea is definition. Ragged at the edges of this flat form. Blue & pink penetrate       to breed a colony of cattle stuck knee-deep in the mud. It appears natural. This process. What is brutely labelled destiny or weather. & nothing remains aside from bodies       bloated stubborn with death             & nowhere to dig a hole or mark a grave                   as survivors battle each other             with hooves & teeth       for a patch of dry land.       The Chilcotin & Thompson feed the mighty Fraser flushing       an estimated 2.2 billion tons of silt annually through the       country from as far away as any mountains we might       conceive: Coast, Purcell, Selkirk, Monashee, Cariboo &       Rockieschoking the Strait of Georgia with thousands of       soon-to-disappear alluvial islands. Impossible to keep an updated map       or prevent the liquid shift of landscape. When one place sinks easily into another. Name it. In bold, black letters. That city dangling at the mouth of that river.