— Pretty Shield,
Medicine Woman of the Crows
transcribed and edited by
Frank Linderman (1932)
All night I am the doe, breathing
his name in a frozen field,
the small mist of the word
drifting always before me.

And again he has heard it
and I have gone burning
to meet him, the jacklight
fills my eyes with blue fire;
the heart in my chest
explodes like a hot stone.

The students eat something and then watch the news,
a little, then go to sleep. When morning breaks in
they find they have not forgotten all: they recall
the speckle of words on certain pages of
the chapter assigned, a phrase of strange weight
from a chapter that was not assigned, and something
said almost flippantly by a classmate on the Green
which put much of the 18th century into perspective.
Noticing themselves at the sink they are aware
the hands they wash are the "same" hands

Ash and strewments, the first moth-wings, pale
Ardour of brief evenings, on the fecund wind;
Or all a wing, less than wind,
Breath of low herbs upfloats, petal or wing,
Haunting the musk precincts of burial.
For the season of newer riches moves triumphing,
Of the evanescence of deaths. These potpourris
Earth-tinctured, jet insect-bead, cinder of bloom —

prays for birds
before an ancient icon —
a stray cat.
The inbred need
to pray
is what makes God
necessary,
and not, she says,
the other way
around;
beyond that
it’ s all mystery,
so don’ t question
why Man creates gods
that demand
sacrifice,
condemning mortals
to spend their lives
trying to praise
godhead into mercy.
Better instead
to ask the frog
to bless the fly,
and, once the cheese
is in the trap,
to beg forgiveness
from the rat.