Voices of the Rainbow: Contemporary Poetry by Native Americans
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Voices of the Rainbow - Kenneth Rosen
Roberta Hill
(WISCONSIN ONEIDA)
WINTER BURN
When birds break open the sky, a smell of snow
blossoms on the wind. You sleep, wrapped up
in blue dim light, like a distant leaf of sage.
I drink the shadow under your ear
and rise, clumsy, glazed with cold.
Sun, gleaming in frost, reach me.
Touch through the window this seed that longs
little by little to flare up orange and sing.
Branches turn to threads against the sun.
Help us to wake up, enormous space that makes
us waver, dark horizon that keeps us strong.
Your heart pours over this land, pours over memories
of wild plum groves,
laughter, a blur between leaves.
These fences hold back frost, let horses run.
Spirits hunt our human warmth
in these quiet rooms. Dogs follow us,
bark at the piercing air. I sort beans,
wish for something neither key nor hand can give.
I must watch you suffering the doubt and grace
of foxes. Let clear winter burn away my eyes.
Let this seed amaze the ground again.
Beside barrels, a mouse glares at me,
folding against the present like a draft against a flame.
Curious bitter eyes tick away
my years. Women have always heard this,
his rattle signaling a day brought wide
like slow ripples in a river.
Ask him why water drifts over moss.
Your hair grows fish-haunted. You never are warned.
Ask why those waving weeds steal what you become.
His answer, the slow tick of fire.
Near timber, axes sing inside the poles.
You chop the wood and chop a buried city
from your bones. Far off, the clouds are floating into dusk
We stack up logs, traveling to the dry field
of our breath. Like ants, we pace the ground,
and let a strange heat shake our darkness,
an old web streams through the door.
Hushed steps follow you to valleys,
where, aching and ringing, you no longer want to look,
until, touching the sudden pulse of all we are,
you burn into the yellow grass of winter,
into one reed, trembling on the plain.
BLUE MOUNTAIN for Richard Hugo
West of your door, Blue Mountain dreams of melting
to the sea. You wait a simple answer.
Tomorrow is a harvest.
I understand what roads you’ve climbed
in the tinted smoke of afternoon.
Crickets whir a rough sun into haze.
The thickly planted field invades your longing.
I left that mountain, easy in good-byes.
The moon flooding me home. The Garnet Range
like arms letting go moments
when too much talk grows fatal. Now
moss folds down in matted sleep. Watch
how wind burns lazily through maples.
I sweep and sweep these broken days to echoes.
More than land’s between us. Wood smoke in the sun.
Timber shrinks below the bend.
Our walls stay thin. We trust them.
We like the light to bleed around the shade.
Peepers show us why we live astonished
at new frost. You taught me how to track
this ragged fire. Chickadees keep me going.
I’ve begged a place for you to come at last.
Clouds gather like mints. Warm, dancing like gnats
in sunshine, rain hugs your heavy arms. Your woman smiles.
The flint lake brightens. In the slow roll
of a wave, joy buries its weight deep
inside your lungs. One bird calls from a far-off pine.
You and Blue Mountain will reach the sea.
STEPS
Digging earth from puddles, she would wake stranded.
Hollyhocks flooded the back step. Morning bright with leaves.
In green schoolrooms, chalk bit blackboards.
Robins paced the blowing grass.
Picnic day, her father sat, muttering: She’s dead,
over and over to fresh