outside, on the patio,
where I go to smoke
darkness folds
into the upraised bare branches
leaning into a prayer
the silent night
is punctuated
with the thuddrops
of melting winter
chick and tick
of the warming wood
measures the time
until day break
sun and smoke
rise well
all is well
all is well
Twice The Moon
The curtain fluttered
and the light bled from the belly of the moon
onto the aching etch of the mirror.
Twice the tall trees stood to stop her.
Twice, she pressed her body to the pane.
Twice the soft night breeze consoled her.
moon-faced child pulled at his mother’s breast
sweet nurturing nectar spilled
into his round mouth
face pressed to the frost scrawled window
stars pinned to the buckled black
gave no notice to the foraging clouds
pane folds itself onto the snow-sculpted hem
shadows danced in the skirts of the trees
and the moon bent on belief that I could dance.
Twice the tall trees stood to stop her.
Twice, she pressed her body to the pane.
Twice the soft night breeze consoled her.
I heard stories, when I lived way up North, on the 58th parallel. Riverside Louis is a real person….the real, salt of the earth person, who I admire and respect deeply though he becomes the open wounds of my heritage in my writing. I wrote my first piece about him, the real him, called “Riverside Louis Sees the Light” after he was hit by a hit and run driver while Louis was traveling in his bottleful of belief. In wanting to help, I realized, the best help I could give was just to memorialize him. Everyone else had gotten him food, shelter, treatment centers, but he always came home to his bridge, like a prodigal son.
Riverside Louis was such an enigma. He was always singing the blues.
There is a lighter side of looking at Louis. Not all Native Americans are afflicted with this sickness, nor does it mean they have surrendered to the animals. The animals manifest themselves as the level of alcohol goes up in any body. The same as the packing of those who need the bottle, there is a packing of those who have recovered and go back to tame the animals in their families and communities.
Bless the liquid animals that weep their way into the lives of those who have been victimized by attempted annihilation, segregation and penned up on reserves, assimilated and broken two-legged animals.
If the weep of rain off leaded glass windows could moan, if the cardboard beds could sigh, if the rail could wail his words, if the windows waited, then the grass could dance his song, and if we listened to them, we would know the soul of Louis.
When he dances with the pole, it is sacred. You can tell it is all he ever dreamed of.
Oh, the trouble he could get in. He did not know the boundaries, but then, Louis was edgy and knew more than we did, sometimes.
The do-gooders only do good when it suits them. Louis knows this.
Riverside Louis is, bless him, so unique and yet so much the definition of the shadow and light of our culture.
Louis had no idea the animals involved
could escape from the glass cages,
from the sharp bed of waves,
from the depths of an amber stew.
One bottle, the young pup came to life,
greeted the prowling pack with tail-wagging
and a slurpy smile of the simply happy
to be part of a pack of beer and cigarettes.
Somewhere between the second and the third,
the ape knocked over a few tables,
aped and gestured wildly for peanuts
and perhaps another refill.
Next, he wants to crow. He sings George Jones
and forget the words as he air-bands
sounding something between the cock
and the powwow singer that yodels.
Around midnight, the moth in him searches,
fluttering off looking for lights on
in the village where there may be a new bottle
and bats himself against that door way.
His tap becomes insistent as the woodpecker
as he becomes frantic in his knock
and the doors remain well locked.
They know Louis’ knock all too well.
At some point, he becomes a buffalo,
charging into the loss of restraint,
wallowing in the mire of after-midnight hours
he barges in, bent on broken bottles of need.
He then becomes dangerous as a battered bear,
where no one is sacred or safe
after his taste of the maddening meat
of leftover lives and leavings.
Sunrise brings out the stealth of a cat
as he hunts for the mouse or mate
to warm the belly or the bed.
You can hear his purr and pant.
The sun finds him slogging in the slough
left over from the foam and fondle,
he flings himself down on the first flat place
where the flies grope his gaping piggish mouth.
Louis has never surrendered to the animals.
Not completely. He recovers in rickety cells
where he paces like a caged lion
and growls for their reluctant release.
A woman is a vessel. She is co-creator. She is a direct link to the Creator/creating. The women that I do symbolize the open woman living, being, becoming, allowing the emptiness of Self to reflecting the light of Creator/Christ/God, by whatever name you call that Omnipresent LOVE. That she creates pots signifies the emptying of “life-on-earth” things to allow for spirit in life. It also symbolizes the need for sorting through life’s experiences in order to sift the seed from the chaff and storing those strengths and truths, the faith and hope incidents: Those incidents of AWE, for a time when they are needed by either the woman, or the women, or the world.
Men relate to the woman/women, in that they are the support and gathers of the clay (the purpose that we will be molded in to). It is through us that they are connected to life itself, here on earth. By sharing our bodies, our homes, our lives, our thoughts, our incidents of awe, they become a partnership in the light we become. We could not do it without them. They brace/protect us, they feed us, they remind us of our femininity, they remind us of our sacrifices and our help us in delivering our potential to the world. They are sacred to us, as spiritual partners in fulfilling our role to the world and for the world.
The pots, the woman knows. She decides what it is that fits her purpose to fulfill her sacred destiny. She is gifted with a sixth sense that speaks to her of the kind of clay, the colors, the shapes, the textures that are worthy of holding her gifts to the world.