This night
in cold moonlight
earth rises up
clouds float down
ghosts walk the margin.
Old ones sing
now shall be then
older ones still sing
then shall be once
to wolf and coyote.
In this season of north winds
sun’s heat barren
spirits rise up
dreams descend
man lies interspersed.
Women sing
we are bearers
men sing
we are sowers.
First appeared in Dipity, Vol. 3, April 2023
The young child stares up into the sky
and sees in the infinite space
countless worlds take form and then die.
On the mesa coyotes cry
seeing gods in what men deface
the young child stares up into the sky
hears his ancestors’ mournful reply
in an atom’s interstitial space
countless worlds take form and then die.
Inside he sees his parents embrace
he would never think to ask them why
the young child stares up into the sky
At the edge of the sun, great planes fly
drop their payloads, return to their base
countless worlds take form and then die.
Tanks and Humvees simply mystify
as young soldiers, brothers wave goodbye
the young child stares up into the sky
countless worlds take form and then die.
First Appeared in The Globe Review, Issue 2, April 2023
https://heyzine.com/flip-book/4f02f9b80a.html
We hunted him as a stag
across his fields, trophy
we called him red man,
color of Ares, gods
sacrificed on our altar,
his rivers run with his spirit.
I am white
bereft of color,
barren, a glare
a desert stripped of life.
It is I who wear
Cain’s mark, plucked
from the garden
the sweet taste fades
my lips are dry.
You are black
an amalgam, green
of the grasses in summer field,
orange of sun
singeing an ocean
surf ablaze, blue
of a crystal sky
purple of robes
of Nubian kings,
brown of the soil
fertile and yielding.
First appeared in IHRAF Publishes Literary Magazine, Issue 1, 2019
https://anoldwriter.files.wordpress.com/2023/04/8d041-ihrafpublishes2019.pdf
Remarkably few
Sioux
live in Sioux Falls
or Sioux City
although they
have few
reservations
about doing
so.
First Published in the 2005 Scars Publications Poetry Wall Calendar
A desert again,
always a desert
and she the saint
of uncounted names,
her crying eases, no
smile appears for this
Madonna of the coyotes,
her orange-orbed eyes
shuttered against the
slowly retreating sun.
Once her tears watered
the desert sands, mixed
with the blood of a Christ
now long forgotten, trans-
substantiated into a spirit
we formed in our image,
no longer we in his.
The Blessed Mother
watches, holding hope,
holding space, holding
a serenity we cannot
fathom in our search
for divine justification.
She remembers, she mourns,
for what ought to be, and waits
for the windwalkers
to pull the blanket
of stars over her.
First published in Liquid Imagination, Issue 52, October 2022
http://liquidimagination.silverpen.org/
The utter and complete absurdity
of living in Florida can
be ever so easily illustrated.
Last evening the neighbor’s
dog decided it needed
to express itself and did so
in clear and loud terms.
The limpkins and gallinules
in the wetland behind
both our homes shouted back
and based on my admittedly
limited vocabulary of bird
there were several four
letter words and at least one
upraised middle claw,
for that language is universal.
And all of this was once
Native American land and I
am certain they would not be
pleased at what we have created
and the birds would agree.
We stood trapped between
slack-jawed and reverent
looking at the woman sitting
cross-legged outside the doorway
lovingly fashioning a pot,
her gnarled fingers gentle
on the yielding clay.
Others this day fashioned
rings and pendants
simple tools on silver
and one of a kind treasures
they would lay out
on blankets hoping we
would want more
than just a photograph.
Our day on the Taos Pueblo
ended too early, its
memories lingering
a lifetime.
On the mesa you can step outside
and look up at the sky,
clouds building mountains
that threaten to eat the sun,
swallow the moon whole.
On the mesa you can step outside
and feel incredibly small,
listen to the coyotes with
the ears of scared children,
unable to run like the jackrabbit.
On the mesa you can step outside
and look up at the sky,
more stars than are possible,
and listen as the wind
whispers in the voice of God.
She sends us a map
showing on which tribe’s land
we are now living.
This is not something
we have thought about,
not something we want
to think about, for that
would demand that we
are the usurpers, the horde
whose pogrom was
ultimately successful,
and that is a face that
refuse to see in the
polished mirror of history.
We were told the average background color of the universe was turquoise. She said “that’s because a coyote ripped it from the mountains outside Cerrillos. But now they say it’s actually a shade of dark beige, drying mud colored.” It was a glitch in the software, the astronomers said. The coyote was unmoved.
She sits on the floor sorting coupons and roughly clipped articles on herbs and natural remedies. Occasionally she looks down at the hollow of her chest, at the still reddened slash left by the scalpel. “I’ve got no veins left. I hate those damn needles. If they want to poison me, I’ll drink it gladly. Socrates had nothing on me.”
I rub her feet as she slides into the MRI tube, and pull on her toes. “I can pull you out at any time.” I look at my wrist but there is no time in this room, checked at the door. Just the metronomic magnet. As she emerges she grabs my hand, presses it against my chest. I cradle her head and trace the scar across her scalp, trying to touch the missing brain matter, the tumor it nestled, pushing aside the brittle hair. “Lightly toasted,” she whispers with a weak smile. She hates white coats and stethoscopes. “They’re the new morticians.” They take her in small sections. She is a slide collection in the back of my closet, on the pathologists shelf. I want to gather them all and reassemble her. I want her to be a young girl of fifteen again.
Coyotes wander down from the Sandia hills. They gather outside the Santo Domingo Pueblo, sensing the slow seepage of heat from the sun baked adobe. There is no moon. They know each star. They stare into the darkened sky. They see only turquoise.
Reprised from March 31 2016
an old writer and his words 