Tag Archives: home

126. A Living Wind

For three weeks wind blew

trailers off their trucks

and arms off windmills

spun too fast for harvest mechanics.

 

For three weeks a town

drew lots for madness,

crossing fingers behind backs

individually, holding a bland face

to calm the rattling windows 

of their souls. 

 

Until snow fell, 

only wine was consumed

in low light, no whiskey.

 

Until snow fell, 

banishing wind,

half the breath of town

was saved for prayer.

Let it be not my son, 

my sister to answer 

wind’s harassment

with a bullet

this time.

 

And this time

everyone drew

blank cards,

drew curtains closed

and kept the lid on the fragile 

trailer of a town. No one wonders 

why women on prairies seventy 

years ago heard voices, saw

visions, shattered

sanity, they wonder

 

why everyone didn’t.

108. Night Owl

 

One owl’s soft hoot eases out from the wood, and

leaves pause their evening flutter.

the last finch tucks down against a branch.

the only thing moving is that moon, slowly

slowly rising through velvety dusk.

Now we are all suspended together 

just above the ground of a world’s constant motion,

we are all suspended together in a holy 

state of waiting, 

waiting together, breath

shallow and slowed for absolute silence, 

absolute hope …

 

The faintest reply drifts in over treetops.

silver light smooth as stone and

no more than the smallest rustle

passed in dying undergrowth.

 

In one answering owl’s soft voice, 

night is released from its patient

pause, from such

absolute stillness, 

such hope.

107. my aunts

.

my aunts look like my

mother as they age, lovely

eyes and smiles that blow

all the fuses. their blood

pulses ancestral coal and tin, skin

slick with a ranch’s fresh

stench of branding: in this case

.

colts and

madness and

– oddly –

social justice a rich seam, shot through

the bedrock of calving and misogyny.

.

rage and shame, too, evenly laid,

thin but

persistent lodes snaking

through each sister.

.

how alive two are yet, how 

men stunted them all,

the girls. 

now they fade.

they stare out across dry lawns,

all the colts broken

.

and we cousins sigh,

softly and half lost like the ranch

left fallow for our

winter.

84. land

.

my beloved land,

grass thick as beaver

pelt, light rolling across it,

licking the sky … 

.

oh

yes, clouds the very

breath of space and earth 

muttering east, rubbing against blue

so blue my bones ache … 

.

oh 

my beloved land.  

bury my now terrified 

heart. when this war is gone

drink down this blood.

.

how will we each live with each

other then, 

ashamed?

.

74. Trespassers Will Be Shot

Her life is thick

as a fist full of loose hair

I am fragile beside, gossamer 

threads frayed, straying like

split ends,

flyaway off my braid.

.

I used to wear dust feet 

to walk ditches

and disappear in alfalfa.

I have forgotten.

Deer browsed beyond fences

behind the east eighty.

I didn’t watch them 

when I was broken whole, we

already knew each other.

I have almost forgotten 

all those sweetgrass dreams

full of sweet peace

I used to hum. Something like 

mown clover.

.

I hold my thick braid 

in two clenched fists, keening.

My sister will adopt me tomorrow and

her son will wrap his small fingers

about my fists.

I will head for adobe as if I belong.

.

63. She Lost Three Lovers in Texas

She lost three lovers in Texas

it is such a big state

full of tall hair,

women with trinket cars,

attorneys at law doing Dallas.

Everyone has two bulldozers

called arms.

.

The U.P. is home, frozen 

with trees on top.

Birds trickle out of September

and all the love you have

you know you will need.

December is longer than

cars crashing.

.

In Texas,

flint stars

big as her pupils and

she shaved the right side of

all of her head.

On the U.P. that hair grew out.

She rattled borders of her mattress

until northern home frost 

settled her down.

.

18. i remember

remember the

feel of grass blown against lean

thighs, hot scent of dirt.

i remember each

breath we breathed of each other’s

under the blanket.

i remember you

and wonder who am I, who

am I now: pale, lost.

i remember language

of seasons, timber cracking

of cold, rivers sighing.

now I have nothing.

no one now knows the thread counts

woven together, 

breath of one wind, our

beat of one old earth heart, one

longing cloud’s soft moan … 

i remember when

i belonged against the earth, 

brown and dusty.