After Raven Stole the Light
Ursa Major
Bear sat by the fire
with Coyote and Raven.
Looking up at the stars,
Coyote slyly asked Bear,
“How long do you reckon it would take
to get to one of them?”
Through the top of his head
Bear shot out,
leaving his furry clay body behind.
He became Ursa Major.
At times he played on the
stars in that constellation.
Around late-night fires
those beings wondered
about this sun and life.
He trailed purple as he sped in between,
listening for those in need of medicine.
“Good trip?” asked Coyote
as Bear shuddered.
Raven had stolen away;
the mist of dawn was calling.
Coyote
Walks along the trail
of the Milky Way.
Dust seeks dust;
wild seeks wild.
He hears the moon calling.
She is light years away,
leaving dust in his eyes.
Seeds of dreams
as light waxes
and wild wanes.
Doubt
Tired Raven stretched his wings,
his girth causing difficulty
on the downward stroke.
Too much pain—
his cold blue tears
created an ice storm.
A farmer shot at him.
An airplane almost
knocked him from the sky.
“How will I make it
to the top of the tree
before the day of renewal?”
Dragonfly
Bear ponders a dragonfly
landing lightly on his kayak.
“Am I not deserving your touch?”
Summer sleeps me lazily in this cocoon of plastic,
afraid to disrupt lilies and turtles from temporary perches.
My eyes lose most of what surrounds me—
insects, birds, frogs, jumping fish, menagerie clouds.
Your thousand-eye glance appears passive;
you alight from my kayak paddle,
seeing direction and winged prey in multitudes.
Dragonfly regards the world
with her compound eyes,
sees more of me than I know myself,
takes flight from the slipper of day
in late afternoon light.
Remember the Owl
“Watch the owl
in the woods at night.
How is it related
to the exhale of my breath?”
asked Bear.
“Watch the owl.
Listen to its call.
You know its voice.
You see this area
in your dreams each night,” answered Coyote.
“Watch the owl.
Listen. Remember.”
Avian Bebop
Coyote tapped his foot
to the steady
walking bass line of
Charles Mingus.
“Yes, I like this.
It’s like bedrock,
talking as it moves.”
Coyote invited Raven and his kin
and anyone else who
would come.
After the concert
the sax player said
to the trumpet player,
“Damn, what happened
with our horns today?
They sang!”
They noticed the
crows and ravens
lining the telephone
wires.
Pebbles
We met in an arroyo out
past the neon lights,
Bear, Coyote, and Raven.
We ambled and ate
and gave crumbs to ants.
We took experience
like tiny pebbles in a rattle.
One pebble,
not very musical.
Put many in a gourd
and you have a conversation through the night.
After Raven Stole the Light
1.
Eagle didn’t bother Raven any more.
The old man was too tired to fight.
Raven stole the sun the moon
the stars.
Eagle carried prayers.
2.
On a dark winter day
when the last gasp of a storm
whistled up the night sky,
Raven unleashed light.
Through mischief and mystery
Spring was born.
3.
Raven, fat as night,
sat atop the world tree.
He shook his wings
to settle and roost.
Light shot from his feathers
spreading stars across
the blanket of night.
4.
Bear and Coyote
stumbled down the streets of Machias.
They were drunk, singing old songs
in a tongue not even the Tribes
could understand.
The earth smelled of musk
from seeds long forgotten
on Appaloosa fields.
The telephone wires
buzzed and hummed,
launching another refrain
as light spilled from the lip
of the ocean.
Raven flew with a broad smile.
Cedar, Sage, Sweetgrass, Tobacco
Coyote and Raven laughed
as my claws got caught up
in the fine strands of sweetgrass
I tried to braid.
“Unh,” I swore,
forgetting my human voice.
I couldn’t help myself;
the smell of the earth
and sweetgrass
brought out the claws.
Cedar, sage, sweetgrass, tobacco.
They found me in the blueberry fields
outside of Calais, Maine;
blue smacking lips
created a strange
contrapuntal line
to Raven’s flight.
Coyote stole from the edge
of the field glancing cautiously.
Cedar, sage, sweetgrass, tobacco.
“Time for a trip.”
“Unh, unh,” smacked my lips.
Coyote looked west,
stood on two legs
and tucked his hair
underneath his hat.
Cedar, sage, sweetgrass, tobacco.
“What of the medicine?” I asked.
Said Raven, “We’ll be back.”
Warrior of Wide Open Spaces
If you travel vast distances
across the bones of burnt summer
remembering a place you saw
for a brief second thirty miles back,
how can you not be there?
If you happen to catch shadows
dancing in the wind,
you and they have been there,
impermanence the cadence
of a distant drum.
Don’t mourn these places.
You find one another
in ten thousand years
in ten thousand ways.
You are and will be
the warrior of wide open spaces.
Edge of a Note
Moon-glow pearls cast the fields
and soak my jeans.
I dive into silver-frosted water
and swim underneath
to gaze up at the full moon.
In your distant howl
the edge of a note finds me
as I break the surface.
Wolf song reaches that part
I forget in the daylight
when the frenetic world
steals the edges of notes
and the howl fuels my heart
with an inaudible hum.
Mid-stride
You caught me mid-stride,
wild-eyed, confused.
You spoke through trees,
sun, stars,
rivers, mountains, lakes.
“Come home,” you whispered
through the frosted grass.
You sang at night
through Ursa Major,
“Be who you are.”
You caught me mid-stride
in a wild dash,
trying to put distance
from this clay body.
Wake Now
When I first came to your people,
you were scared, sick,
and did not know
the secrets of life’s
abundant garden.
I married a woman and
taught her all I knew.
You are of that family.
Ignorance has a way
of tangling its diseased branches
tightly to the heart.
This happened many times.
Wake now, child, and see, smell, taste,
feel silence and abundance
hidden within her robe.
Bear lifts his sleeping son
to greet the dawn.
