Now you have awakened
In another place
What will you sing in your sweet voice
The Cheyenne horses you are following
Taking you home….
Your form made of eternity and silent rain…
Brother….
We carry you with us
You are a part
Of our belongings….
Memorium
For my brother
John William west
Kit fox clan
Cheyenne nation of oklahoma
1952/2020
Ainoh
Scenting the small deepening in the leaves
Arrived from the lighted rivers
The haunted
silent rivers
The
bloodied
dying rivers….
Where at their banks winter prepares its messengers….
This is the day of absences
The day of singing….
Where the dead and the living
Are inside us….
Tsistsistas name for winter hawk
From the photo of my sister barbara bartlett
Who ainoh visited for two days in queens ny.
In here the wind pushes against its memory
The dark trees listening
Where a psalm of witness hides….
Awakening in early morning
Something broken in the river
Where a lone bird
is singing
sound of an open hand moving across a
dusty brown table…
lonely words seeking shelter
While all the shelters are burning….
Autumn 20/20
from the stronghold
Oct21/02
It rains….inside the air that is folded toward it….it sounds its knowing making the streets glisten and the fields open their coats
and the birds listening for winter fly through it….It rains deepening the leaves of autumn into
Their mirroring soft singing….And what has fallen in the rain quiets the fields
Lowering its prayer
Into the earth….
Rain
Foggia ghetto
10/14/20
In this dreamless autumn
dark birds unknown to me form
Their ancient pattern toward some summer place
Found this small path and a prayer
Floating in a rain pool
Where the full moon will find it
And they will listen together
To the sorrow….
Psalm for us
On the Lesina plains
October 1 20
Waking shadows Bring us to a place where we look back And know we can never return.... While the sky rains voices Of those who are falling dancing in the Colors of the lost.... We stand where children sang Their small footprints All around.... poem of farewells Foggia ghetto 8/31/20
This is the place
Where the end fell into itselfWe were there as it looked back toward us
With our empty bells and our souls
Burning in the hillsWe arrived in a boat made by a quivering child
Everything fallen out of our mirrors
As we taste the first days
And the last….
The place
Foggia ghetto
18july20
They sit where horsemen have passed
Moisture rising from
the hoof prints….Owl dreams hovering above them….
on a rainy mountain road near grove Oklahoma
A dead black one lifted its glistening wing
As I passed…..In a haunted mansion in France
I closed the bathroom mirror the limp wings
And vacant eyes behind me….These are the ones that chose us….
And will sit with us
While only our shadows remainand our bones have melted away….
Angels
Thursday July 16
Lesina Italy
“You are not a wolf
And this is the land of wolves now….”
Sicario the film 2015.Long before winter these ones sent
Their tracks looking for you….The black dog sits among you
Its crimson eyes turned toward youThey will ask you to come out
Whether by your stench of hatred or evil fearThey sit in the blackness where you sleep
They will rise as darkness to enshroud you
They know who you are…..
We are among you
Even now….
Dog soldier poem for enemies.
Mahago domiutz tsistsistas
Hotomitoneo
June 30.20
It is a long journey
It is the world’s dream of us
The footprints that have led away are our own
We watched them leaving
In the silences that have taught us to be still
While the wind howled…..
It is not itself
We sit in its dampened rooms
Born so far away from ourselves
Looking back over our winged shoulders
Where the long journey began….
Painting with words
For Paul klee
From the stronghold
June13.20
