I GIVE YOU TO RIVER, a poem for National Poetry Month

Like my ancestors before me, I love rivers. The peace of running water always calms me, watching it ripple past slowly, hearing the murmur of the water over rocks and branches and the swish of it against the banks, spying the many lives that live along the river--fish, turtles, snakes, muskrats, beavers,   hawks, and eagles. For millennia, my people have always chosen to settle near rivers.

When I was growing up, I was taught to go to water when troubled or ill. Running water is strong medicine, good medicine. We pray next to it, and then use it to wash away whatever is troubling our hearts, minds, or bodies. Sometimes a creek or brook will work for me, but if I'm truly heartsick, I seek out a river.

This poem is another in a series of poems that I have posted to celebrate National Poetry Month. It is an exploration of this practice of going to water when troubled. In the worst kind of pain and grief, sometimes only a river can provide any release. For a healing ceremony, one needs to build a fire, say the right prayers, make an offering, but sometimes in the worst straits, it can be simply you and the river.

I GIVE YOU TO RIVER

Turning to the water for release

from my troubles, from you,

I write your name in my palm with my finger,

then brush off the invisible letters

into the river currents passing at my feet.

I ask River to carry them out of my heart and mind,

carry them away from my life, remove all that darkness

that is you infesting my mind against my will,

replaying memories that were nothing

but playacting on your part,

though my heart tries to find excuses,

for all the deliberate pain.

I have to face it finally—there are none.

Hard to believe, but even harder to find

I still long for you.

This stubborn heart won’t give up.

So I barricade it, keep it safe from its stupid fidelity,

while I wait for River to carry out magic,

carry your name and games far from me,

set me free finally with the power of moving water,

my own inborn element,

which carves memories of trauma from the earth itself

and leaves wondrous scars.

Published in Dark Sister (Mammoth Publications, 2018)

SPELL FOR BANNING A BOOK, a poem for National Poetry Month

We are living in dark times. We are living in times when lies are elevated above the truth and fantasies and “alternative facts” are elevated above fact and reality by our leaders and those in power over us. We are living in times when children kept in cages after being torn away from their parents are said to be in “summer camps.” We are living in times when the free press is called “the enemy of the people.” In fact, we are living in times that become more and more reminiscent of the rise of Nazi Germany than we would like to believe or experience.

We are living in times when the president of the United States tweets out his desire to censor newspapers, television news programs, entire sections of the press, and published books. So far, he has not succeeded in this, even though he daily tweets out his condemnation of “fake news” and his desire to change the libel laws to undercut the First Amendment, but the situation looks grimmer every month and week and day. It reminds me forcibly of the book burnings of the Nazi regime.

One of the earliest and most important steps a dictatorship must take is to seize control of the narrative. Thus, we see the multitude of lies and the constant accusations of fake news. The next step is censorship, which grants so much control over what the populace can know, and after censorship comes the destruction of books and magazines which contain the truth and not the regime’s propaganda. Along with this, we always find persecution of journalists and writers and poets who are not willing to spout the regime's line. Unfortunately, history gives us all too many examples of this through the ages. In the photograph at the top of this blog, Nazis are burning books in Germany.

This poem is about this process of banning books, which continues to be a threat down through history. Not too long ago, we had books by Latino and Native and Black authors banned in public school districts in the Southwest, which led to a band of activists gathering those forbidden books  and smuggling them across multiple states into those school districts to educate those children. This was called the Librotraficante movement and led to the courts reinstating those books in the school district. Vigilance is the price of freedom.

SPELL FOR BANNING A BOOK

First, find a censor.

This will be hard—

not that censors are rare,

but they are adept mimics.

Do not be fooled. No matter

how benevolent its disguise,

a frightened censor is dangerous.

Approach with caution.

To safely capture it

for your spell, you must circle

the censor chanting soothing

nonsense syllables.

It is meaning that terrifies

censors.

Surround the stupefied censor

with charms made from advertising

photographs of a mythical golden age—

smiling mothers

in high heels and aprons, silent fathers

keeping sentinel on horseback, sexless

children never asking

questions. Sacred to the censor,

such charms have power

to blind it.

Select the book

you want banned.

Set it outside the circle

of charms, and carefully

remove the charm nearest

so the censor can detect

the presence of an attempt

at meaning.

Protect yourself.

Enraged censors have been known

not only to ban books

but to burn them

and then press on to people.

Published in Dark Sister (Mammoth Publications, 2018)

COMING AROUND AGAIN--a poem for National Poetry Month

It has been almost 5 years since I began my battle with breast cancer. This poem for National Poetry Month looks back on that time and on other times before that when death was a possibility for me. One advantage of becoming an elder is that death is no longer the boogeyman, the monster in the closet.

This poem speaks to that love for life that keeps us clinging to the mortal realm, even as different aspects of our bodies weaken or begin to fail. It becomes possible to take the long look, and when that becomes possible, fear dissolves.

COMING AROUND AGAIN

Three years ago—three years of poison and desperate

positive thinking—they cut off my breast,

carving out the lymph nodes

of the underarm as well.

They left me with an ugly, puckered scar

14 inches long and 3 inches wide,

raised one-half to one inch high

along its length, and another

incision 3 inches below that scar

where a length of tubing inserted

into the chest drained

blood and lymph into an attached bag

for 3 ½ pain-filled, sleepless weeks.

Death has come looking for me before this

several times. I have always tricked her

into leaving me to my life a little longer,

Scheherazade putting the random scenes

of daily living into dramatic narrative,

heightening conflict and tension,

generating suspense, embellishing

dull parts to create more spark and excitement,

adding touches of humor to lighten the mood,

a story playing out in front of her

to which she needs to know the ending

before she brings down the final curtain.

I’ve grown familiar with Death’s face,

can read it to tell if I need to spice up the story

because she’s losing interest. Old friend

and familiar, she bears no horror for me any longer.

I have seen the long view through her eyes,

the sacred labyrinth of galaxies

spinning out of control throughout the universe

pulling apart in spiral motion, eternal

dissipation of energy rippling outward

with magic like the violent change brought

by tropical storm clouds seen from the air,

galactic snake coiling around stars and planets

and black holes whirling like water

down a drain, sucking all matter and energy

within reach, voracious maws, widdershins,

sunwise, ears of creation cocked

for the song, symphony, story, vining

through the nebulae, gathering tension

and force, the vast’s giant spring pulled taut,

ready to snap back into the kaleidoscope,

force of tornadoes, whirlwinds,

passing into the still eye surrounded

by the stomp dance of the stars,

Creator’s medicine wheel, coming,

going, bringing, leaving, giving, taking,

moving up and down around the spiral

of time, infinity’s tilt-a-whirl.

Remaining attached to this life, these loved people,

I have no wish to join the stardust spiral dance

of destruction and creation before I must.

I’ll stay here in this incarnation as long as I can,

loving this insane world’s dark and light moments

and the people, trees, birds around me, clinging

until the last to its chiaroscuro, yin and yang.

Still, I won’t fall screaming into the void

when my time is up. I’ve seen the wheel of fortune

that is the cosmos. Life is circular, grinding all of us

into crumbs of creation, raw material for new wonders.

I’ve promised myself and lovely bony Ms. Death

I will embrace my ride on the celestial merry-go-round.

But the story’s not over yet—there’s at least one more chapter

before the spectacular, mystifying, completely satisfying climax.

Published in Dark Sister (Mammoth Publications, 2018)

WHAT CROW SAYS--a poem for National Poetry Month

I have a strong propensity for crows. They're birds that don't get the love and respect that other birds do because they're not as flashy in appearance and their voices are harsher, even though they are classified as songbirds.

Crows are intelligent, can make tools and remember the faces of those humans who have been a threat to them or their community, even have rituals to mourn their dead. They often bring us messages of wisdom from the Creator and show us the way when we need guidance.

This poem is the first in a sequence of mine called "First Cousins Speak." In these poems, some of our relatives in the larger world discuss humans, those troubled, puzzling late-come additions to Creation.

WHAT CROW SAYS

This is how gods are made.

The land is wild and free,

soil just beginning to cover the warm rock.

One day, the stone lights up

with the dreams of animals.

Out of the shining,

something other awakens.

These things happen so easily.

Nature is crowded,

everything intent on being warm.

Who knew what damage dreams could wreak?

This furless, clawless thing created

from whatever’s wasted or not wanted in us,

we watched it arise

walking on two feet like Bear

but so weak and slow.

Bear can outrun a horse,

kill a deer with one blow.

It should have died but didn’t.

Some tenacity kept it alive

and breeding and changing

the very world around it

We all spoke the same language

until that changed, too.

Now we’re left with consequences.

Now we are the other,

everything other to this being.

We are the constant target in the crosshairs.

Now we live with the burden of being seen,

living into our observed death.

Great plans never work out.

Chaos is forever seeping in.

All it takes is a crack in creation

like this to ruin everything.

Here is a wound no spell can heal.

We’ve tried them all.

Not even Spider can weave us whole again.

Spoilage creeps over the whole land.

Cherish your wildness.

It’s all we have left.

Live close to the edge.

Published in Dark Sister (Mammoth Publishing, 2018)

Tallgrass--a poem for National Poetry Month

One of my favorite places on the planet is the Flint Hills of Kansas. The Flint Hills is the largest surviving Tallgrass Prairie in the country, 4.5 million acres of bluestem and wild animals and cattle and tough people, all survivors. I went to school there, and my parents are buried there.

My computer operating system keeps showing me scenes of landscape from around the world that are supposed to be breathtakingly beautiful, and they often are. Still, I know people who drive I-70 west or east through the Flint Hills and insist that the Kansas landscape is just flat and boring. I insist that they must be lying or blind. The Flint Hills inspire me so much that I've written a number of poems about them, and I thought I would put this one up for National Poetry Month to remind us all of the quieter beauty that often surrounds us while we are seeking after what we consider the exotic or fashionable.

TALLGRASS

The prairie is a tough place.

Formed when the Rocky Mountain

rainshadow killed off the trees,

millions of buffalo grazed its big bluestem,

turkeyfoot, sideoats, switchgrass, grama, Indiangrass,

sweetgrass, prairie dropseed, buffalograss,

for millennia, but, big as a nightmare

when you encounter one up close,

the buffalo never defeated the prairie.

Summer in tallgrass lands is harsh—

blazing hot sun, only occasional rain in torrents.

Summer turns the plains into grassy desert,

But those grass roots plunge deep, deep into the earth,

some twelve or more feet under the surface.

The soil under a prairie is a dense mat

of tangled rootstock, rhizomes, tubers, and bulbs.

Those roots hold out against drought

and preserve the soil against thundering

gullywashers and toadswampers.

Summer never defeated the prairie.

Sometimes lightning strikes,

and fire races across the landscape

like water poured out on concrete,

spreading out with amazing speed and inevitability.

The prairie compensated by making seeds

that need to pass through flame to germinate.

Fireproof seeds, what an invention!

The tribes learned to set controlled fires

to bring back gayfeather, blazing star, prairie clover.

Now, ranchers burn the prairie each spring.

Fire never defeated the prairie.

As for winter, the waist- and shoulder-high grasses

triumph over the snow, spreading

large swathes of sun-colored grasses

across the scene, only occasionally punctuated

by a spread of snow along the meandering paths

where animal and human feet have trodden.

The prairie just absorbs the snow,

swallowing it down to build stronger, deeper roots

to withstand summer’s hot, dry onslaught.

Winter never defeated the prairie.

Buffalo, white-tailed deer, antelope, pronghorns,

gray wolves, coyotes, bobcats, cougars, red foxes,

black-footed ferrets, badgers, shrews, skunks,

raccoons, possums, black-tailed prairie dogs,

jack rabbits, prairie chickens, bull snakes,

and the occasional human for centuries

made trails and paths through the grasses

by trampling them down or cutting their stems.

If paths are not continually maintained

by a great deal of manual labor,

they disappear like smoke.

The prairie will always take them back.

The only thing that ever defeated prairie

was a man with a steel plow.

Published in Dark Sister (Mammoth Publishing, 2018)

AWAKE AT THE END OF NIGHT--a Poem for National Poetry Month

As National Poetry Month begins, I am still battling with this shattered right shoulder that has a destroyed rotator cuff. The good news is that I have finally recovered from the awful illness that help me and its grip much of this winter.

For my first National Poetry Month poem, I thought I would post “Awake at the End of Night,” in part because I am spending so many wakeful nights right now and have in recent months. The wonderful thing about the end of winter is that, during the worst wakeful moments late in the night as morning is approaching, now I can hear the cacophony of bird songs, and it is so welcome.

There is nothing so lovely as listening to a northern mockingbird sing in the dark. You will find that such an image or sound shows up in the number of my poems, simply because this bird is so important to me. I wish you all a month of marvelous poetry. I am enjoying all of the Poetry that is being posted on Twitter and on Facebook. I hope to post poems several times a week throughout the month on this blog, but I am teaching a pretty intensive class right now in writing the novel with lots of written assignments for the students, entailing lots of written feedback from me, so we'll have to see how the month goes.

AWAKE AT THE END OF NIGHT

Praise the mockingbird singing farewell to night.

Praise the owl flying home with its mouse-feast.

Praise the beetle scurrying from sudden light.

Praise the moon sailing down to sleep.

Praise the branches whipping the house in the wind.

Praise thunder shaking windows and walls.

Praise sheets of lightning flaring across the sky.

Praise the seeds in darkest soil uncurling.

Praise the tendrils of root and stem reaching out.

Praise the worm that leaves riches in burrows behind it.

Praise the rain coursing down the brick walls.

Praise the blanket wrapping in our body heat.

Praise the sound of your even sleep breathing beside me.

Praise the body I wrap my leg around.

Praise the heavy arm thrown over me.

Praise the breath moving in and out between my mouth and yours.

Praise the spirits of the sun and moon that live within us.

Praise all things silent and hidden.

Published in Dark Sister (Mammoth Publications, 2018)