1.
The dark socket of the year
the pit, the cave where the sun lies down
and threatens never to rise,
when despair descends softly as the snow
covering all paths and choking roads:
then hawkfaced pain seized you
threw you so you fell with a sharp
cry, a knife tearing a bolt of silk.
My father heard the crash but paid
no mind, napping after lunch
We sat across the table.
he said, cut off your hands.
they are always poking at things.
they might touch me.
I said yes.
Food grew cold on the table.
he said, burn your body.
it is not clean and smells like sex.
it rubs my mind sore.
I said yes.
I love you, I said.
That’ s very nice, he said
I like to be loved,
that makes me happy.
Have you cut off your hands yet?
My father in the aluminum stern, cursing
another fouled blood-knot: all the shits
and fucks as integral to the art of fishing
as the bait-fish, little silver smelts
I sewed like a manual transmission,
the same inbred order and precision
needling the leader through the ass,
out the mouth, through the jaw, out the nostril
You plan an uncomplicated path
through Colorado’ s red dust,
around the caustic edge of Utah’ s salt flats
a single night at a hotel
in the Idaho panhandle. Our plans change.
It’ s spring, we are two Indian women along
together and the days open:
sunrise on a fine long road,
antelope against dry hills,
heron emerging from dim fields.
You tell me this is a journey
you’ ve always wanted to take.
You ask me to tell you what I want.
The stars grow lemon
in the field, spread
like tea leaves in
a cup; red-wing
blackbirds fold themselves
into the fence,
corn dreamers.
The sky undulating
with clouds returns
gold-throated arpeggios
to the one walking
at sunrise, sunfall.
Light as the air
I sit on my
cottage steps;
a tom cat come
home to die for
the day.
A meadow brown; across the yonder edge
A zigzag fence is ambling; here a wedge
Of underbush has cleft its course in twain,
Till where beyond it staggers up again;
The long, grey rails stretch in a broken line
Their ragged length of rough, split forest pine,
And in their zigzag tottering have reeled
In drunken efforts to enclose the field,
Which carries on its breast, September born,
A patch of rustling, yellow, Indian corn.
Beyond its shrivelled tassels, perched upon
The topmost rail, sits Joe, the settler’ s son,
A thin wet sky, that yellows at the rim,
And meets with sun-lost lip the marsh’ s brim.
The pools low lying, dank with moss and mould,
Glint through their mildews like large cups of gold.
Among the wild rice in the still lagoon,
In monotone the lizard shrills his tune.
The wild goose, homing, seeks a sheltering,
Where rushes grow, and oozing lichens cling.
Late cranes with heavy wing, and lazy flight,
Sail up the silence with the nearing night.
O Ancient One,
your web hangs down from the pines.
I am of the Owl clan.
I have been to water,
my dress is of red clay.
He moves at the edge of you,
binds us with your threads.
The center of his soul shall be my soul’ s center.
Our paths shall be white forever.
Where we move the paths from every direction
shall recognize each other.
We are one never to be parted.
I am standing outside
in Minnesota
ghost wind recalling
names in winter mist
The road smells
of dogs two days dead
White photographers talk in
the house of mainstream
media
I can’ t articulate
the agony of Eagle Singer’ s
children to them.
Dumped wet and momentary on a dull ground
that’ s been clear but clearly sleeping, for days.
Last snow melts as it falls, piles up slush, runs in first light
making a music in the streets we wish we could keep.
Last snow. That’ s what we’ ll think for weeks to come.
Close sun sets up a glare that smarts like a good cry.
We could head north and north and never let this season go.
Stubborn beast, the body reads the past in the change of light,
knows the blow of grief in the time of trees’ tight-fisted leaves.
