For Buff, Zora, and MJ, Paris, November 2015

Across the homelands
We keep watch,

We see the future coming

The buffalo have now returned 

They graze the grasses long in spring 

And winter wheat will come in time

For harvest after solstice.

I am Tatanka Itancan.

Water glints in morning sun,

A shadow curves to surface light

Folds back down, a graceful dive,

Scales flash and disappear.

I am Cante Skuya Win 

While arching high and over us

Thermal riders fly through clouds,

We hear their cries, the darkening skies,

The Golden Eagle watches.

I am Anunkasan Tokaheya

Across the homelands

We keep watch,

Though we may leave and then come back

To care for Unci Maka

And so this is our vision now,

Ancestors guided us to this

We ask you keep your promises 

We pledge that we'll keep ours. 

We're all one heart, one voice, one plan, 

The one Creator gives us.

No Way Out

Out in the meadow the Japanese maple

Burns red in November sun, slanting in low enough to uplight

The lowest limbs.

Red, it pierces me, destabilizing an

Already unsteady self, wraps anger

And fear twinning as I fight the tears.

In past times I've loved the fall, my

Season, the season of my birth,

I thought that I've been good and strong

And tried to occupy my space and time

With some intention; 

With love and an open heart.

Red, like blood, like fire, fugitive,

This intensity.

Six O'clock AM

Yellow moon,
Round spotlight in an
Early wintery morning,
Fog lifting from the
Frosted fields, a
Close porous mantle 'round
The restless owl.
He'd been hooting
As I drifted off,
Was plaintive when
I woke; the room moon-bright,
My blinded sleep sealed
Wakeful in the silent house.

Alone I strain to recognize
The settling creaks
And sighs of the old place,
The changing darkness
Of the full moon waning
Stirring near-noiseless creatures
Moving on the metal roof
And along the gables,
Big as running bears in
A wary, undreamt landscape.

If he were here I'd have
Tossed and turned
To shield away
The interrupting moon,
And not heard a thing but
The voices in my dream:
Wake up, wake up,
There just might be
A new day waiting, coming;
We're calling now,
We're ready now
For you to claim the light.

North Woods

Russet on the golden miles

The swaths of bracken bronzing 

Into nestled corm to sleep

Amid the thistle and scrub pine

Giving way to watery

Bogs, to kettle lakes

Rimmed by boulders and outcroppings. 

We drive consumed by shouting silence

Of conversation unimagined

When we were young and 

Starting off in a world

Undimmed by so much peril.

But I still carry him, although 

He's gone forever, leaving

Memory in the stillness of my heart,

Ahead of days that roll uncertain

Into a dark where no light shines.

And yet a door was opened once, 

And I will never close it,

Meanwhile the maple and the birch trees 

Shed their leaves,

My season metamorphose

As with theirs, because 

All things must change,

Although for some of us, 

All things will stay the same. 

Redoux

It's hard,

Really hard to keep 

This train on the track.

Some days I don't do well at all

Trying to do this,

And if I give in

To reality,

I'd have to quit trying.

So I live on this 

Restless line,

Hope,

Praise singing from

Some sweet ordinary sky,

The bits of dust kicking 

Up on our country road

Suggesting possibility to reclaim

A spot on this wildly and not understood spinning globe.

If only the black flies 

Would cease

The space outside

At near-perfect dusk

Could seduce me into

Thinking 

I've been so wrong,

Maybe right at other times,

But nonetheless this insight 

Shakes me with this 

Psychic throttle: 

Woman, don't give

Up, and if you do, 

Make a fiction of it and don't forget to

Weave in the thank you bits. 

Meanwhile, hello 

Lovelies, you old lilies blooming now, I see 

You wait in perfect splendor

With some rhythm I'll never

Know, 

Magnificent in the splendid

Diffidence to these strange 

And crippling fights

These ferocious struggles

We think are life and death.

No, life 

Is fulsome in this outside refectory, this holy constant solace, 

And I missed this space, these 

Past few weeks of ancient growing glory 

Probably because of my own self, my failure to always 

keep

Ithaka in mind.

Now gratitude rises to 

Meet the road

Where someone wends his truck to far off home down into the next section;

The neighbors' kids shout their coming in; 

I hear them faint in my

Primordial settling of all this stuff,

And there is

Bird song mixed into

Twilight. 

 

Across the forest, 

Placid Seneca

Floats, miasma

Under still haze

Indifferent as I 

Fret and fuss into

This new stuff, determined 

To live my place, 

Be nourished.

Who will know if 

I quail in resolve

And vision? 

I listen to myself, the 

Answers I have 

Just guesses.

It doesn't matter if I

Succeed or fail. 

Main thing is, I say, I tried.

Heat

Heat is too high

In the house, 

The metrics of the change,

Dew point

And humidity, the stillness

Of the wind I'm trying to beckon

If this front moves through,

All insufficient logic for the

Misery of the body.

Enervating and

A bit cruel,

Unci Maka is just

Responding;

She is who She eternally is.

It is hellishly hot 

Before the 

Sunset on

This mid-northern clime 

July day;

We have water,

Wildness of weather,

Weeds, and

Not too much sun,

Though I wonder

If this is how they'll feel

When I am gone, for it 

Is bearable.

I do see all the beauty, 

Reordering what looks

Like chaos into the paradigm

I see coming.

If I can just get to the 

Other side, I'll be able

To tell them.

Horses

I was standing 

In the dim barn, watching as

The swallows swooped,

Diving under old rafters

And stirring up near-dusk.

From that

Frame I gazed out into the paddock

Boasting stands of

Queen Anne's Lace, old

Stumps persisting

With growing green shoots,

While beyond, in the pasture,

Sarah traded fly masks 

For hackamores, hitching 

Long leads to bring 

Compliant horses to

Graze in grass near the 

Spot where we were viewing 

The pinking sky, mammatus 

Forming and then dissipating

Into the soft dusk of 

Seneca's miraculous hills.

The horses would have none 

Of our sentimental scenario,

Balking at the paddock's threshold

Into the barn,

And thence into the night's

Oncoming recap of a sun-struck day.

Still, her slim communing,

Her own golden mane in

The picture as I watched 

Was more perfect than what

She envisioned:

The swallows swooping,

This daughter and her tawny 

Horses, seen through 

Queen Anne's Lace, 

Tinged by closing gold, 

Unconscious 

Of her pure perfection in my

Moment.