“Reservoirs created by the [Hydro Quebec] James Bay
Project cover an area of 12,241 square kilometers,
the largest bodies of water created by humankind.”
—from the James Bay Road website
your power needs water
traced to distant points of light like stars
unreachable foreign
reflected in the fragile bones of quick-
silvered fish drowned caribou the snow-pale geese
relatives that feed me
decaying within as the fine root-web tangles in
the absence of water
siphoned and malign
feeding insatiable turbines
hulked on your layered landscape
a new topography shoveled and scraped
trembling beneath the weight
of your vast new lakes never measured to memory
nor washed blue on faded maps
here, where treeless spaces
crackle with a grid of
black and fire
all this to bring distant points