Weekly Poem: At Gathering for Mother Earth | Tewa Women United, written on site
The corn is singing
all colors of corn are singing
and we are listening.
The sun is singing
the sky is blue singing
to all manner of listening.
The listening when
we don’t even know
we are listening...
Weekly Poem: The Spring
Like the way a spring seems
To rise, fresh, out of a silent earth,
So my words, once started,
Find their own way
From my equally silent depths.
I suppose the invisible machinery
Of my subconscious is involved,
But a poem is more than something
Stirred from darkly distorted memories of
My pasts...
Weekly Poem: durable whiteness
still flayed by the swollen pelt racked by pain
durable whiteness
amidst the cracked red sea
a new landscape across my canvas
a new story
you orestes
me hypatia
alack...
Weekly Poem: FIRST SHA’LA’KO
The men come down
in twos and threes South
to dust-dry Zuni River:
surround and screen
six tall Sha’la’ko of the
snapping beaks and hooting.
Up the hill the small
Zuni girl chops at
stacked juniper with
a sharp, man- sized axe:
smoke comes East swings
around North then West...
Weekly Poem: I think I understand fishing
when lakes glisten with shallow ripples
and crows cry from distant pines,
echoing late summer
when the cicadas' clamor breaks afternoon calm
as autumn approaches
the fisherman stands along the shoreline waiting
sentinel-like, dressed in khaki pants and shirt
sunglasses and broad-rimmed brown hat
he contemplates the moment, then another in simple succession...
Weekly Poem: Fire or Water
A flock of crows
reflect the midnight moon.
A coyote howls
the starless horizon.
Quiet settles
the slow footsteps
of a sleepless man
as he strikes a match
lights a filterless cigarette
and pretends a herd
to keep watch over,
imagines a Winchester in his hands...
Weekly Poem: If Only
Losing control
as one grows old
could be divine.
A hoarder’s ecstatic
Zen trick
into letting go.
Hades ransacked
Zeus stripped of bolts
& tossed from Olympus...
Weekly Poem: In Hobbs
Monday morning sunrise – Hobbs, New Mexico, October 25, 2010
Already the west winds blow, relentless
Rocking the pickup we huddle inside
The dogs and I
“In Hobbs,” granddaughter Lily shrugs her two-year old
Shoulders and remembers the summer green Ruidoso mountains
I am on the edge of town
Down a gravel road that runs by the ruins of a
World War II Quartermaster’s depot
Abandoned now, only concrete borders and cactus around...
Weekly Poem: Nature is Inevitable
Don’t think about what’s inevitable, give it corn.
Give it a pint of cow dung, give it your underwear.
Not everything that’s inevitable is
You think the world’s coming to an end, give it the finger.
After all you’re not killing anyone, you’re not executing.
You’re just commenting. You have a right to choose what you say.
I’ve come back from the costume of my past & I’m inevitable.
And I’m not causing a little girl with flaming arm crying for help
to face the future you’ve given her: the power-mongers who
stick money up their ass & fart gas, are —
causing this war against the spirit, this war against the Earth
this war against the god of my parents...
Weekly Poem: Going Gone
Yesterday I up and went to Chimayo and Truchas
met an Uruguayan in Chimayo with a
honey voice
all rasp and rough
music a love song
gone to seed from
feeling too much and
living too hard and
painting all the same
In Truchas, a Basco raised in Cuba
with red ringed eyes
knew me for an Indian right away
Any Veda he could
lay his hands on, he said,
he had read...