Mistah Song

Stars untether the boneless night….

There is a room where outside its smiling windows
The shackled skeletons break free….

One awakened
One asleep….

We have borne winters soliloquy as beggars
In a field of blinded goats…

Wandering the burnt landscape among
The names of charred
Regret….

She is spinning the wheels of rainfall
in a dress of fallen names….

Placing them in a leather glove….

For the next one to wear….

Mistah* song

*mistah – Cheyenne word for ghost or great horned owl

From the stronghold
June 3.19

Birds

Pierced the universe with the beak of a woodpecker
The warmth of its circumferring flowing through
The sage beneath me into the earths tremoring face….

Watched raven….
Tasting its shadow in the shallow of a still river….

Knelt on my knees in the middle of a street…
Looking into the eye of a dead sparrow
The eye clouding in grey gathering ringclouds of farewell….

Held an eagle wing toward the enemies of the earth
Blowing from the wingtip the ashes
Of cedar….
And resistance….

Carried the bones of Mistah….

The marrow of ghosts buried deep in its cavernous memory….

Of dog soldier prayers….
And Cheyenne fires that have no flame….

But life….

From the stronghold
16 May 19

For our mothers

Soft rain embraces the flowers with its silence
Night rings its ancient bells after
The lightening strikes….

All around light that has hidden in clouds
Opens its eyes….

Looking for you….

For our mothers
Bologna Italy
12 May 19

Remembering the inward dreams that don’t go away

Remembering the inward dreams that don’t go away
The small silences of early morning….
The wanderer in me now
Among the warrior uncles of my youth….

The porch light of those summers in Oklahoma bathed in circling moths

Shimmering as heat over the wheat fields…

Shimmering in hard life and peyote moons….

A grey heron….

Standing on one leg

In the still spirited waters

Of twelve mile point…..

Foggia ghetto
April 30,19

In the rain just now

In the rain just now
Before dusk…

The smallest stones on the shoreline light their lamps….

Every morning the same songs unsung
Hang from the trees where the owls sleep….

Soft songs melting through the leaves

The fragile leaves….

Hiding among the death masks
The still open hands….

Over which a song I have dreamt all my life

Is sounding….

The songs
Foggia italy
April 27.19

Here in the unspoken

 

Here in the unspoken….
Where a dead lover

immaculate in her

Invisibility….

Brought me to a flowing river….

Late afternoon

 

The trees ascending into the water….

Where her eyes opened for the last time
forever….

Whispering

This is where dreams bring their wounded…
This is where dreams cross over leaving
us….

This is where dreams….
Come to die….

From the stronghold

April 2 19

For pat.

Mom

Mom

Here in this quietude….

There is your voice
                Whispering from a remembered place…
Smiling from the distances that separate fear from joy….

Agony from aloneness….

Your cigarette smoke forming ancestral light….

                    That embraces calm
                                                 In a world lost….

To itself….

Foggia ghetto 
February 23.19

Diffused light…these hours before morning

Diffused light…these hours before morning….
without you
The silent room rings its loneliness ….
the sound
of a child’s toy bell….

Without you ….

Fingerprint on the balcony window
Pointing toward
first
snowfall….

Your footsteps waiting in the hallway…

For dawn to bring me here…

The calumet poems
For my grandparents
January 26.19

Dawn disguised as sorrow

Dawn disguised as sorrow 
Stands before the wintered plain

A wolf track fills with snow….

Crow lands….
Shaking its shimmering being
From the solitude of flight….

Winter
                  Winter

The badger watching….

Mahago domiutz ehiwoh
(Walking badger said this)
January 10,19
Bologna Italy

Waking to a yellow poisonous sky in Paris

Waking to a yellow poisonous sky in Paris

A dark kitten purrs softly on my hotel window ledge….

I cross the early empty streets toward a taxi….

Heavy fog at gateway

Small rabbits running across the tarmac….

In the airport lounge in San Francisco hours later

Sipping an old crow and seven…..

Later in a rainstorm in a phone booth

I light a cigar….

Drifting toward a waking dream….

A white field of broken skulls in Yemen

The only darkness the holes….

Where their eyes were…

Lines from a revisited image

Bologna 1.11.19