A Communion of Water and Blood, Page 3

  Inertia

  There is something still

  to be revealed

  years after the dog

  lifted its eyes to the treetops—

  ten thousand blackbirds raised

  a ruckus,

  clattering and clacking

  before rising as one,

  like sudden rainfall.

  The trees now quiescent, the dog dead,

  fall advances.

  Crickets incessantly chirr in tall grass.

  I stay, waiting,

  to see what might happen.

  ***

  Sacagawea

  For the first time

  she could not have been happier

  had The Way revealed itself

  as the way back

  to all the days relinquished forever.

  Here again were dolomite bluffs

  high as clouds above a sheer shroud of mist,

  the bend in the river still cool where her heels

  dragged against the rude insistence

  of the Hidatsa warrior who took her,

  a girl barely twelve.

  Now a woman, sixteen, she encounters

  the place anew, proceeding as then out in front

  running, crying,

  light leaping from her bare feet breaking

  the water, transporting her across

  an interval of years to greet

  a Lemhi girl and lost companion who escaped,

  for all one could see, untouched by capture.

  The magnitude of recognition finally

  compels the brother Cameahwait, now chief,

  to descend from his horse and embrace her,

  enacting a reunion deemed afterwards

  too implausible for movies.

 

  She never complained, not once, despite bearing a child,

  bearing all hardship, even hunger,

  becoming eventually reduced to sucking the bitterroot

  after consenting to continue with the white discoverers

  and that half-husband, Charbonneau,

  and the black man, York, through the mountains.

  Though desiring to winter in a better place,

  she accepted a contrary vote, vociferously objecting only

  to say it would be a hard thing

  should she not be permitted—after all—to go with the others

  to see the great water, to partake of the monstrous fish

  waiting to be butchered on that peaceable far shore.

  ***

  Plaint

  The swallows have already gone;

  seems early this year.

  Though these mornings bring fog

  in the valley, or settled more generally about,

  the sun when it breaks through feels warm as ever.

  I mow, watching a soft wind canting

  a Monarch butterfly (butterfly!) sideways across a near field

  while, their tails languidly flagging,

  the dogs dig in the asparagus bed.

  Quiet comes early at dark.

  Still, I listen to crickets, remembering

  the heron’s blue shadow crossing my words

  in the morning as it flew across the sun.

  Sitting poised at the picnic table, holding pen

  to paper, I again muse and wait, ready to observe

  all the common, somber allusions,

  but my only true thought seems more unoriginal

  than unusual.

  The world is as it was, and I am happy to be here—

  and really, who would prefer anything else?

  ***

  Walking Barefoot Through Dandelions

  A galaxy of yellow suns

  float as purple afterimages on a field of green—

  until I concentrate upon a single bloom

  long enough to wonder,

  Where are the honeybees of yesteryear?

  Two metallic-blue swallows dip and churn

  wheeling acrobatically overhead

  while tendril clouds revolve ‘round and ‘round

  and stars circle unseen.

  Like a castaway waiting on an island shore,

  I stand on a cool slab of smooth fieldstone

  marking a golden dog’s simple grave;

  I close my eyes beneath an upraised hand

  to see him prancing yet through purple haze, approaching

  forever towards me.

  ***

  Where a Poem Explains:

  Things Aren’t Always as They Seem

  Moon, sun

  move in the sky,

  the one revealed

  nights and days

  or concealed, reconciled

  with its opposite other.

  The near, revered,

  reflection

  of the other,

  indirectly lets us see

  hidden perplexity

  in plain sight.

  What is is real

  as well as false:

  moon sometimes one,

  sun the other.

  High noon

  or night

  the inconstant sphere

  becomes mother

  to numerous conceits

  and one fear;

  at times she hides,

  at times elides

  chance and continuity.

  Her every phase

  is a shadowy iteration

  of a world that glides

  inside her; yet

  entangled, separate they go

  into oblivion,

  sliding under a set,

  indifferent sun.

  ***

  This Moment

  This moment in which I sit quiet with the sun on my back

  will never repeat. Though I live a thousand years

  the same concurrence of things shall not recur in my life’s time.

  The little flies smaller than gnats swirling in a cloud overhead,

  the swallows swooping to the water’s mirroring surface,

  the bluegills floating motionless in an ageless amber pond

  will no doubt recur here in some similar iteration some future day

  fine as this one—but none of it will be quite intricately the same as now.

  The crickets already are chirring at the onset of fall;

  the goldenrod stands at the berm’s dry edge in full bloom;

  across the way, the cattail heads have turned all dark velvet brown;

  and the world changes again as an unknown fish dimples the still open surface

  while a damsel fly hovers, before alighting, weightless as light on a lily;

  a pigeon, one of a pair, drinks at the near shore before flying

  back to the barn with a whimsical, almost musical whimper.

  Still I wait and watch the elderberry transforming its white florets

  into green berries and ripe purple fruit, observing as well the cut grass

  floating on the tensile top of the water an arm’s reach away.

  The dogs lie panting beside me on the grass, on a curved strip of lawn,

  enjoying with me this timeless respite before we rise and move on.

  ***

  The White Fields

  Morning reveals a confection

  of fragile fields. I feel them

  crackle underfoot.

  Cold seeps

  into opening woods, continuing,

  continuing,

  penetrating the timbers of a relinquished

  warm house.

  I take off my glasses, and look

  at the sky.

  ***

  The End

  Thank you for reading

  Alas, She Was

  She was some lass, lass she was

  Until no longer mine,

  Some lass she was until she was

  Alas, no longer mine.

  Begone

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