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Downtown in December
Wednesday, December 14, 2011 I have something unusual, all of the poems this week, excluding my own, are from a single book, Harper's Anthology of 20th Century Native American Poetry. It's a great book, published in 1988 by HarperCollins, with a collection of fine poets. Every time in the past I've gone to this book, I've picked a poet or two, then left it behind, wishing I could do more. So this week, I'm doing more; think of it as a tribute post to Native American poets The photos are new, taken during a walk-around downtown last week on a very wet, wintery day. And, as for my own poems, most of them are old, written either during or written about this time of the year in years past. The reason for the old poems - I want to post this early and take a week or two off without the daily grind that it takes to get this out every week. Since early 2006, I have posted every week, taking, I think, no more than five or six weeks off during those six or so years. I'm thinking I'm due for a break. The problem is I enjoy doing this so there's a good chance I'll be back earlier than planned. So, "Here and Now" may be back after the new year, or it may be back after Christmas. On the other hand, I have two books for next year progress, both at the stage where attention is required, so maybe I'll have enough to do without stumbling back to this before I'm intending to right now. Hope the next year is better than this year, which sucked. Except on a personal level, while the world and the nation was sucking big time, I had a pretty good year. Leaving me not really sure of what to wish for in 2012 - something better for everyone else, more of the same for me, I guess. So, anyway, here's our happy poetry wranglers for maybe the last time in 2011, that suckie, pretty good year. White Earth March in North Dakota Seasons in Santa Fe Peter Blue Cloud The Old Man’s Lazy Me not rain, but wet Duane Niatum White Owl near Ocean Shores The Art of Clay Me ghosts of inspiration past Louis (Little Coon) Oliver Empty Kettle Mary TallMountain There Is No Word for Goodbye Frank Prewett Plea for Peace Me legacy Jim Barnes A Season of Loss Me balance of power Jimmie Durham Columbus Day Me making tamales on Christmas Eve Simon J. Ortiz Spreading Wings on Wind Four Bird Songs Me just another winter day Lance Henson At Chadwicks Bar and Grill coyote fragments near twelve mile point Me Christmas wishes Linda Hogan To Light Man in the Moon Me spaghetti games William Oandasan Words of Tayko-mol Acoma Me things I’d rather not think about Wendy Rose Alaskan Fragments, June 1981 - Summer Solstice Me departures Steve Crow revival water song Earle Thompson Song No Deposit Ray A. Young Bear The Language of Weather Me beacon blackout at the oasis A. Sadongei For Carlos Charles Bucillio Me meeting with the movers and shakers  My first poet from the anthology is George Vizenor. Of the Chippewa tribe, Vizenor was born in Minnesota in 1934. Ultimately a poet and teacher, he lived in several foster homes after his father was murdered. He eventually moved in with his mother and stepfather, but was later abandoned by his mother. When Vizenor was fifteen years old, his stepfather was killed in a work accident. He joined the Minnesota National Guard in 1950, at age fifteen, and was honorably discharged after a year when the unit was activated and sent to Korea. He enlisted in the Army two years later and was on active duty from 1952 to 1955, serving in Japan. He studied at New York University from 1955-56, earned a B.A. from the University of Minnesota in 1960, pursued graduate work at the University of Minnesota from 1962-70, and won a Bush Fellowship for study at Harvard University in 1974. Vizenor served as a community advocate and director of the American Indian Employment and Guidance Center in Minneapolis in the late 1960s. He was a staff writer for the Minneapolis Tribune from 1968-70 and contributing editorial writer in the late 1970s through the 1980s. Vizenor began his teaching career at Lake Forest College, Illinois in 1970. He was director and professor of Native American studies at Bemidji State University from 1972-73. He taught at the University of Minnesota from 1977-85, the University of California-Santa Cruz from 1987-90, and the University of Oklahoma from 1990-91. Vizenor is Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley and he currently teaches American studies at the University of New Mexico. Vizenor is the founder and series editor of the American Indian Literature and Critical Studies series at the University of Oklahoma Press. Vizenor won the 1988 American Book Award for Griever: An American Monkey King in China and he received an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Macalester College in 1999. White Earth Images and Agonies late october sun breaks over the cottonwoods tricksters roam the rearview mirrors government sloughs colonial remembrance cards capture trees cultures close for the season beaded crucifixion double over in the reeds shamans at the centerfolds pave the roads publish their poems fiscal storms close the last survival school animals at treelines send back the hats and rusted traps touchwood a bad medicine March in North Dakota the whole moon burns behind Jamestown seven wings of geese light the thin ice asian sun bleeds on the interstate pressed flowers tremble in the prairie stubble paced on the mirror my fingerprints blot the past Seasons in Santa Fe Four Haiku: mountain snow warblers search the apricots no apologies the poplars chatter our words come close to winter hail on the lawn chairs catalpa blossoms spread over a new black car catch our breath social bees wheel inside a paper cup children at the park Also from the anthology, I have a poem by Peter Blue Cloud. Born in Quebec in 1935, Blue Cloud is a Mohawk poet. He was raised on a Mohawk reservation in Quebec where attended school as well as in Buffalo, New York. While he spoke only the Mohawk language at home, he was introduced to books in English by his grandfather. He began writing poems and songs as a teenager. He first published in the journal Akwesasne Notes, where he became poetry editor in 1975. He has also worked as an ironworker, logger, carpenter, and woodcutter. He has published six books of poetry and won the American Book Award, before Columbus Foundation, in 1981 The Old Man's Lazy, I hard the Indian Agent say, has no pride, no get up and go. Well, he came out here and walked around my place, that agent. Steps all through the milkweed and curing wormwood: tells me my place is overgrown and should be made use of. The old split cedar fence stands at many angles, and much of it lies on the ground like a curving sentence of stick writing. an old language, too, black with age, with different shades of green of moss and lichen. He always says he understands us Indians, and why don't I fix the fence at least; so I took some fine hawk feathers fixed to a miniature woven shield and hung this from an upright post near the house. He came by last week and looked all around again, eyed the feathers for a long time. He didn't say any;thing, and he didn't smile even, or look within himself for the hawk. Maybe sometime I'll tell him that the fence isn't mine to begin with, but was put up by the white guy who used to live next door. It was years ago. He built a cabin, then put up the fence. He only looked at me once, after his fence was up, he nodded at me as if to show that he knew I was here, I guess. It was a pretty fence, enclosing that guy, and I felt lucky to be on the outside of it. Well, that guy dug holes all over his place, looking for gold, and I guess he never found any. I watched him grow old for over twenty years, and bitter, I could feel his anger all over the place. And that's when I took to leaving my place to do a lot of visiting. Then one time I came home and knew he was gone for good. My children would always ask me why I didn't move to town and be closer to them . Now, they tell me I'm lucky to be living way out here And they bring their children and come out and visit me, and I can feel that they want to live out here too, but can't for some reason, do it. Each day a different story is told me by the fence, the rain and wind and snow, the sun and moon shadows, the wonderful earth, this Creation. I tell my grandchildren many of these stories, perhaps this too is one of them.  Months of drought, probable a couple of more years of it before it's over. But a wet December, and a wet December day with very strange rain. not rain, but wet another, swampy, rainy day, but not rain, really, if you define rain as wet fallen from the sky, but these last several days something else, wet that does not seem to fall, but just to materialize in the air, so that everything is wet, streets, sidewalks, parking lots, covered patios as well, anything open to the outside creep of hanging wet, wet, slippery, frog-land, the wet everything they’ve dreamed about as they slept in dry creekbeds under sun-baked mud *** downtown, a walk downtown in winter, the wet hanging from every building, tops of buildings hidden in dense fog, the river quiet but for the tiny splash of ducks as they paddle, webbed-feet roiling beneath the surface, head and bills dripping in the wet above the wet, a beautiful day for walking through silent streets, along the mirror-river, following the ducks, listening to the frogs sing their guttural hosannas as they emerge from the mud to the warty gates of froggy-heaven a quiet moment, alone in the midst of many… *** a dry, dusty, summer, ablaze with six months of August heat, not defeated, for there will be another summer without water and probably at least more summer, of drought after that, but pushed back for the week by cold and wet that materializes in the air, hangs there, making drip on all that is not insulated by thick windows and locked doors through which only the smallest damp may creep a beautiful day for walking wet and chilled, the day like a cold beer, pulled fresh from its ice-chest bed, left out after a hard day's work in the field to dew up at an end of summer day picnic, a break in the summer, waiting  Next from the anthology, I have two poems by Duane Niatum. Born Duane McGiness in 1938 in Seattle, the poet, fiction writer, playwright, and editor adopted the name,Duane Niatum, after one of his S’Klallam tribal ancestors. After his parents’ divorce when he was four, he studied S’Klallam tribal ways with his maternal grandfather. At age 17, Niatum joined the Navy and was stationed in Japan. He received a BA from the University of Washington, an MA from Johns Hopkins University, and a PhD in American culture from the University of Michigan. Niatum has been widely published and honored, his poems widely anthologized and translated into more than a dozen languages. His honors include residencies at the Millay Colony for the Arts and Yaddo, the Governor’s Award from the State of Washington, and grants from the Carnegie Fund for Authors and the PEN Fund for Writers. Niatum still lives in Seattle and has taught at Evergreen State College and the University of Washington, as well as area high schools. Snowy Owl near Ocean Shores Snowy Owl, storm cast from the arctic tundra, sits on a stump in an abandoned farmer's field. Beyond the dunes cattails dance as steady as the surf, rushing and crashing down the jetty. From two-hundred feet away he seems to spot a meal crawl from mud hole to grass-patch. When nearly an hour passes and nothing darts, a North Pole creature shows us how to last. The wind ruffles his feathers from crown to claws while he continues gazing at the salt-slick rain. So when a double-rainbow arced the sky before us, we left him to his white refrain. The Art of Clay The years in the blood keep us naked to the bone. So many hours of darkness we fail to sublimate. Light breaks down the days to printless stone. I sing what I sang before, it's the dream alone. We fall like the sun when the moon's our fate. The years in the blood keeps us naked to the bone. I wouldn't reach your hand, if I feared the dark alone; My heart's a river, but it is not chilled with hate. Light breaks down the days to printless stone. We dance from memory because it's here on loan. And as the music stops, nothing's lost but the date. The years in the blood keep us naked to the bone. How round the sky, how the planets drink the unknown. I gently touch; your eyes show it isn't late. Light breaks down the days to printless stone. What figures this clay; gives a sharper bone? What turns the spirit white? Wanting to abbreviate? The years in the blood keeps us naked to the bone. Light breaks down the days to printless stone.  Oh, the trials of the poem-a-day-poet. ghosts of inspiration past I used to have breakfast staff meetings, bringing in all my managers every quarter for a two-day retreat, beginning at breakfast, day one, not so much business at breakfast but just a welcome, howdy-do for people spread out over several hundred miles who didn’t usually see each other but for these meetings I never started any meeting, including breakfast, before 8:30 or 9, unlike the fellow who called the meeting this morning at the tables next to mine, 7 a.m., bright and early, the boss evidently considering himself such an august personage that his employees would certainly be glad to give up an hour of their early-morning day for the privilege of watching him chew his wheat-toast I was smarter than that, understanding that since I rarely came to these meetings with good news and since all the managers had lots else to do, usually seeing these meeting as pains in their work-a-day-asses and not happy to be there, I gave everyone and extra hour or so every morning before starting the meeting (knowing all the while that for some of the older, more established managers the extra hour I was giving was actually an hour less than they normally gave themselves in the morning but being more interested in outcome than process, I never made an issue of unless it became an issue for those who worked for them) and speaking of outcome over process, my process of poem-writing is clearly leading to an outcome no one could possibly be interested in, unless they prefer boring memoir to poetry, in which case they should be somewhere else and me as well if I continue on this road upon which I have now wasted what seems several thousand words of overpowering disinterest to everyone... making it time to change course and seek something that is not of over- powering disinterest to everyone, but I’m coming up short in that department and can only think of the Christmas cards I need to do today, a job I always put off even though my Christmas card list has dwindled to only five or six, hardy Christmas cheer types who persisted in sending me cards even though I only occasionally send one back to them - thus winnowing my annual Christmas card down to the afore mentioned five or six whose dedication and persistence in wishing me a Merry Merry Christmas I will reward with a 25 cent reply card fromWalMart… but, once again, more memoir, still no poem of no interest to anyone, except perhaps my mother, were she still alive, and even she, I expect, would condition her interest upon receipt of a better that 25 cent WalMart Christmas card from me… but again, unless Mother's spirit is hanging over my shoulder (which she does that some- time, you know) reading this, there is in sum no one interested, unless you made it this far in reading (and I sincerely apologize for that) and haven’t escaped to your refrigerator for extra strawberry jam for you English muffin, in which case I congratulate you on your dedication and promise to find a way to get out of this soon… like maybe I’ll just sit here and watch the deer grazing across the way in the wet morning moving in and out of the foggy tree line like ghosts of inspiration past…  Next, I have a couple of the earliest poets from the anthology. The first is Louis (Little Coon) Oliver, a Creek Indian, born in Oklahoma in 1904. A descent of the Golden Raccoon Clan, he traced his ancestry to those who lived along Chattahooche River in Alabama. Oliver died in 1991. Empty Kettle I do not waste what is wild I only take what my cup can hold. When the black kettle gapes empty and children eat roasted acrons only, it is time to rise-up early take no drink - eat no food sing the song of the hunter. I see the Buck - I chant I chant the deer chant: "Hehebah-Ah-kay-kee-no!" My arrow no woman has ever touched, finds its mark. I open the way for the blood to pour back to Mother Earth the debt I owe. My soul rises - rapturous and I sing a different song, I sing, I sing. The second of the earlier poets is Mary TallMountain, born in 1918 of Athabaskan-Russian and Scotch-Irish ancestry in a small village along the Yukon River in Alaska. When her mother became terminally ill, Mary was adopted by a non-Native couple and taken away from her village. Traumatized first by losing her family and homeland, then by the harshness of mainstream American culture, she wrote that she felt like an angry outsider for many years. Turning to poetry,she became a well-known, widely published and honored poet. Before her death in 1994, lived for many years in San Francisco's Tenderloin district where she is remembered for her generous encouragement of aspiring writers of all ages, from inner-city San Francisco to remote villages in Alaska where she taught poetry to children in her later years. There Is No Word for Goodbye Sokoya, I said,looking through the net of wrinkles into into wise black pools of her eyes. What do you say in Athabaskan when you leave each other? What is the word for good-bye? A shade of feeling rippled the wind-tanned skin. Ah, nothing, she said, watching the river flash. She looked at me close. We just say, Tlaa. That means, See you. We never leave each other. When does your mouth say goodbye to your heart? She touched me light as a bluebell. You forget when you leave us, you're so small then. We don't use that word. We always think you're coming back, but if you don't, we'll see you someplace else. You understand. There is no word for goodbye. The earliest poet in the book is Frank Prewett, an Iroquois born in Ontario in 1893. He was educated in Toronto at the University of Toronto where he studied the arts from 1911 to 1916. He enlisted in the Canadian Artillery before graduating and served as a lieutenant in World War I until he was wounded. While recovering from his wounds, he met Siegfried Sassoon, who encouraged his writing, which he sent to Virginia Woolf who published his first book of poems in 1917. He received a scholarship to Oxford where he received his B.A. in 1922 and his M.A. in 1928. He also taught at the University School of Agriculture and Forestry in Oxford, where he published a series of studies on the marketing of farm produce and milk. He served again in the military during the Second World War and, eventually, as a civilian adviser to the Supreme Command in southeast Asia. He retired in 1954 to Scotland where he lived until he died in 1962. Plea for Peace A steep valley overhung by trees And a ditch ripple, noiseless, nosing its way Where dwell all seasons quiet and at ease, Nor bird nor shine but comforting peace all day. Let the plain be bare, wide and lone that hides the valley, the noiseless rill: Brack be the water, slippery the stone So there be peace, peace and quiet still.  I began my poem-a-day regimen in 2007. This is a poem I wrote new year's eve of that year, thinking about the kind of thing one thinks about when turning the calendar page to a new year. legacy in 120 years or less everyone on the planet today will be dead i read that this morning that’s you and me gone and everyone you know and everyone I know and the last surviving World War I vet, as well as the baby due to be born at 12:01 a.m. of the new year and all the celebrities you read about in People magazine and all the politicians running for president, losers just like you and me in the mortality race, and everyone who wronged you as well as everyone who took up your cause all gone, all of us, succumbing to the death to which we are born, all of us what will be our legacy? for me, it's only dust I'll leave behind dust that blows across some plain then into the sky to become the grit around which a rain drop grows, part of a spring shower to feed the roots of grass and trees and summer blooms that delight lovers who have never heard my name then back to dust again  Jim Barnes, my next poet. Born in 1933 in Oklahoma, Barnes is of Choctaw and Welsh heritage. He received his BA from Southeastern State College in Oklahoma in 1964 and his MA and Ph.D. in 1965 and 1972 from the University of Arkansas. He taught at Truman State University from 1970 to 2003, where he was Professor of Comparative Literature and Writer-in-Residence. After retiring from Truman State, he was Distinguished Professor of English and Creative Writing at Brigham Young University until 2006. On January 15, 2009, Barnes was named Oklahoma poet laureate for 2009-2010. He is a widely published and honored poet. A Season of Loss We left the horses in the draw and climbed the painted ledge to see the blue and distant home but saw an autumn sun set fire to trees on ridges we had yet to pass: gnarled trees that burned and stood more than a shifting phoenix, cast in colors other than mild moods. Our blood was now to thin to know the half-moon brother, our skin too pale; yet we, hands out, tried again to sow our spirit in the stars. A frail effort: our father's blood pulsed slow. At our back a glyph grew perfect: hard in stone a hand drew back to throw, a sun stood still, a moon arced, sticks grew into bones. Only human, we touched out thoughts, hands, eyes, assured ourselves of the moment, and leaned together hard against the sky.  Actually, I like women, I truly do. Some of my best friends are women. balance of power my lovely and gracious spouse of the female persuasion has been on my case because I bought a small bag of dog food for our front-porch cats, refusing, in her femalien obstinacy, to believe that cats will eat dog food, or anything food-like, for that matter, if you warm it up to body temperature so that the cat can imagine it is its own fresh kill, brought down after a wild chase and pounce in its backyard savannah… now it’s possible, in a distracted mood, thinking manly-thoughts, that I may have picked up a small bag of dog food for the cats by accident, but I dare not admit that, for as I previously specified, my gracious and lovely spouse is of the female persuasion and you know how they are when they catch a man, deep in manly thoughts, making a very stupid manly-mistake that no female would ever make, even If wearing pants and a poka-dot, brocade jock-strap (they do that sometimes, you know, in the privacy of their own female Fortresses of Solitude) practicing for the day when the male in the spousal relationship passes on to the great pool hall in the sky, leaving his female spousal counterpart his 73 Dodge Charger, his vintage baseball card collection, and the tragically underused family jewels grown dusty and pea-sized in her apron pocket, and while he will be sorely bereft as he watches her grind through the gears of his Charger and break the hermetically-sealed seals of his of baseball cards, the fate of his balls, so rarely used, isn’t much of an issue to him… even so, ever man knows that he will ultimately lose, whether in this world or the next, it is im- portant to maintain, for as long as possible, the balance of spousal power that sustains the relationship on an even keel, until it doesn’t, and men are no longer allowed to wander aimlessly on the highways and byways of our great country without asking directions  Probably the most militantly angry of the poems in the anthology is the next piece by Jimmie Durham, a sculptor, essayist and poet. A Wolf Clan Cherokee, Durham was born in Arkansas in 1940. He received a B.F.A. from Ecole des Beaux Arts in Geneva in 1973. During the 1970s he was a member of the Central Council of teh American Indian Movement and was a founder and executive director of the International Indian Treaty Council. In 1987 Durham moved to Cuernavaca, Mexico, where he was based until moving to Europe in 1994. Columbus Day In school I was taught the names Columbus,Cortez and Pizzaro and A dozen other filthy murderers. A bloodline all the way to General Miles, Daniel Boone and General Eisenhower. No one mentioned the names Of even a few of the victims. But don't you remember Chaske, whose spine Was crushed so quickly My Mr. Pizzaro's boot? What words did he cry in the dust? What was the familiar name Of that young girl who danced so gracefully That everyone in the village sang with her - Before Cortez's sword hacked off her arms As she protested the burning of her sweetheart? That young man's name was May Deeds, And he had been a leader of a band of fighters Called the Redstick Hummingbirds, who slowed The march of Cortez' army with only a few Spears and stones which now lay still In the mountains and remember. Greenrock Woman was the name Of that old lady who walked right up And spat in Columbus' face. We Must remember that, and remember Laughing Otter the Taino,who tried to stop Columbus and who was taken away as a slave. We never saw him again. In school I learned of heroic discoveries Made by liars and crooks. The courage Of millions of sweet and true people Was not commemorated. Let us then declare a holiday For ourselves, and make a parade that begins With Columbus' victims and continues Even to our grandchildren who will be named In their honor. Because isn't it true that even the summer Grass here in this land whispers those names And every creek has accepted the responsibility Of singing those names? And nothing can stop The wind from howling those names around The corners of the school. Why else would the birds sing So much sweeter here than in other lands?  My Christmas poem, 2008. making tamales on Christmas Eve well, with a Mexican mama and a bunch of Mexican tias in the house it turns out the only one who knows how to make tamales, has ever made tamales before, is my half-Mexican son so we all gather around, the aunts and uncles nephew and nieces, mom and dad, to watch him do the magic mixing of the masa, the spicing of the meat (pork and chicken), then all file into the dining room to take places around the table, corn shucks in the middle, a bowl of masa and a bowl of meat in front of each of us and begin our part of the night’s entertainment, spreading the masa just so on the damp corn shucks, too much masa, we scold each other, no, now that's too little, mnding everybody else's tamale business, careful careful how you spread, we remind each other, from the bottom of the shuck about two thirds to the top, leaving a little shuck tail to fold over when the tamale goes into the steaming pot and then the meat strung in a little line down the middle, just right amount of meat or the tamale will not hold together if too much meat or it will be just a masa ball with hardly any meat at all if too little then the rolling of the corn shuck into the little cigar shaped masa and meat pie, careful, still, not need for perfection it’s just a tamale, after all, but best if all about the same size so that as they steam they will all come done at the same time, no dried out little ones, no mushy big ones then into the pot and the wait begins checking every twenty minutes to make sure there is water in the pot to boil to make steam, and two hours later, three hours later, 12 dozen tamales, a dozen for everyone to take home and several dozen for breakfast tomorrow morning, Christmas Day  Simon J. Ortiz is probably best known of today's Native American poets. I've used his work frequently on "Here and Now," so will skip the normal minimal biography and go straight to his poem. Spreading Wings on Wind a plane ride from Rough Rock to Phoenix Winter Indian 1969 I must remember that I am only one part among many parts, not a single eagle or one mountain. I am a transparent breathing. Below are dark lines of stone, fluff of trees, mountains and the Earth's People - all of it, the Feather in a prayer. Faint, misty clouds, a sudden turbulence, and steady, the solid earth. "It looks like a good road," from Pinon to Low Mountain. It branches off to First Mesa and then Second and Third Mesa. The Hopi humanity which is theirs and ours. Three of the Navajo Mountains in our vision, "Those mountains over there, see their darkness and strength, full of legends, heros, trees, the wind, sun." East, West, North, and South. Those Directions and Mountains. Mountain Taylor. San Francisco Peak, Navajo Mountain. Dibentsaa. The Navajo mind must have been an eagle that time. Breathe like this on the feather and cornfood like this, this way. Sometime before there were billboards advertising Meteor Crater, there must have been one hell of a jolt, flame and then silence. After many years, flowers and squirrels, snow streaking down inside the cone. Over Winslow is the question, "Who the hell was Winslow, some cowboy?" A miner? Surveyor? Missionary? The forests are neatly trimmed hedges; mines are feeble clawing at the earth. What the hell are we doing to this land? My grandfather hunted here, prayed, dreamt; one day there was a big jolt, flame, and then silence, just the clouds forming. Four Bird Songs First Song Is a little wind fledgling nestled in mountain's crooked finger, is a river to a secret place that shows everything, little song. In your breath, hold this seed only a while and seek with it. One single universe, I am only a little. Second Song The sound in wood, a morning hollowness of a cave on the flank of a small hill startles with its moan yearning, a twitch of skin. In the distant place a wind starts coming here, a waiting sound. It is here now. Shiver. You are rewarded for waiting. Third Song By breathing he started into the space before him and around him. cleared his throat, said this song maybe tomorrow is for rain. Lightly hummed a tight leathersound and then heavily. It rained the next day, and he sang another song for that. Fourth Song An old stone was an old blue, spotted, the egg's shell, only moments before under the sun that had become new against old sand. A tear falling, stirring into space filling it completely, making new space. When he touched it, and it moved it was still warm with that life.  One of my new poems for the week. just another winter day it’s a cold overcast day, dark and still, and in the sharp clear air of winter I can see the cars passing outside my window and the people on the sidewalk and the trees, finally bare, leaves fallen overnight, as usual here when winter comes in one swoop-flash of cold that settles in at night, bringing cold and shivery mornings before moving on, to return in several days or weeks with warm days and nights in between - it is no place to live for those who place to much value on constancy, except for constantly unbearable summers, not like winter when each day is a dice toss, where those who live here know that what begins the day will not end it and wise goers-round-and-about know to carry with them three levels of body coverings, heavy coat, light coat, and tee shirt, all very possibly used during the course of a day, stripping down or piling on clothes as the day progresses dark to dark and there is also the pretty young girl at the bus stop right outside my window, dark-haired, darkly clothed in stylish black head to toe, shoes, hose, skirt , thick fuzzy coat , red lipstick to punctuate the dark, on her way to work, maybe, or to school, finals, maybe at the community college down the street a couple of blocks, overdressed for school, but the days are few that she can wear this stylish winter combination of black on black and a cold day calls for such rarely worn presentation, a chance not to be passed over for such small questions as dressed or over-dressed… but I know if I stay at this window long enough today, into the warm afternoon, I will see her again in shorts and tank top, the usual uniform of the south Texas day when the sun will shine and then will not, when the wind will blow and then will not, when the cold will creep in on soft chilled paws, then retire until another day to a warm sun shining just another winter day in the hills I call home  Lance Henson is a Southern Cheyenne who was born in 1944 in Washington D.C. He was raised near Calumet, Oklahoma, served as a Marine in Vietnam, graduated from the Oklahoma College of Liberal Arts in Chickasha (now the University of Science & Arts of Oklahoma), and took a Master's degree in creative writing from the University of Tulsa. Six small books of his verse and a volume titled Selected Poems have been published in this country since 1972; other collections, with parallel translations, have appeared in Italy, Germany, and The Netherlands, and he has taught and presented workshops in over five hundred schools, colleges, and universities in the United States and Europe. Here are a couple of his short poems. At Chadwick's Bar and Grill a sky the color of a wren's breath hangs over red clouds hint of rain and home is dirt underfoot tu fu and li po have forgiven nothing not waking drunk under any moon or the incessant calling of a loon so waiting is the roses own signature and spider catches the fly at morning whether i am here or not coyote fragments 1 he is rust in moonlight 2 when the roadman paused we heard our brother's voice 3 one track in snow 4 eight without ears hang upside down from fence posts near hammon oklahoma 5 the moonlight splashes in their eyes near twelve mile point for my grandparents at times the heart looks toward open fields and sees itself returning orange pall of sun the low hymn of trees in the garden a north wind blows over dry stalks of corn birds gather there scratching over echoing footsteps your names have become a dark feather to whom the stars sing  Christmas day, 2009. Christmas wishes Christmas day, clear, bright as mid-day on a beach in the tropics, quiet, too, and cold enough to freeze the little mousies’ tails if they were stirring, which they are not, having overindulged in little mousie eggnogs at their Christmas party last night, and, meanwhile, it being a week before 2010, it’s a good time to be thinking about my wishes for the new year, and, i guess, what i wish for next year, aside from the Miss America stuff like world peace and an end to hunger, which would be nice, but there’s no reason for me to waste my wish on it if Miss America has it taken care off, so, mainly, i guess, my wish for next year is that i’ll still be alive at the end of it, and, also, this year having gone pretty well, more of the same for next year would work  Next, I have a couple of poems by Linda Hogan. Hogan,born 1947 in Denver, is a Chickasaw poet, storyteller, academic, playwright, novelist, environmentalist and writer of short stories. Her first university teaching position was in American Indian Studies and American Studies at the University of Minnesota. She was a full professor of Creative Writing at the University of Colorado and then taught the last two years in the University's Ethnic Studies Department. She currently is the Writer in Residence for her own Chickasaw Nation. To Light At the spring we hear the great seas traveling underground giving themselves up with tongues of water that sing the earth open. They have journeyed through graveyards of our loved ones, turning in their graves to carry the stories of lie to air. Even the trees with their rings have kept track of the crimes that live within and against us. We remember it all. We remember, though we are just skeletons whose organs and flesh hold us in. We have stories as old as the great seas breaking through the chest flying out the mouth, noisy tongues that once were silenced, all the oceans we contain coming to light. Man in the Moon He's the man who climbs his barn to look down on the fields, the man leading his horse from the barn that finally fell down. When I'm quiet he speaks: we're like the spider we weave new beds around us when old ones are swept away. When I see too much I follow his advice and close my worn-out eye. Yesterday he was poor but tomorrow he says his house will fill up with silver the white flesh will flatten on his frame. Old man, window in a sky full of holes I am like you putting on a new white shirt to drive away on the fine roads.  A not-so-quiet night at home with family. spaghetti games dinner for family last night, the big table full, spaghetti, a curious choice since there’s no one at the table remotely Italian, mostly Mexicans here, and me, mostly German, which I guess would give me the closest connection to spaghetti’s country of origin since my heritage was briefly allied with the Italian heritage during that long and terrible war several wars ago which reminds me, following dinner, three loud and fiercely fought rounds of Scattergories, the game where players are required to identify people, places or things that begin with a particular letter, for example, a color that begins with “r” is red, a horse is a roan, a contest is a race, a vegetable is a radish, and so on... the fun in the game is the cross table battles and shifting alliances over obscure or made-up words and nuances, such as, is “rug cleaning” the same as “rug shampooing” and, being the same, do they cancel each other out or, being different, should both players get a point, and of course, the groaner of the night, the “notorious person” beginning with “r”... “Rudolph Hitler" which did not get a point but did get two or three minutes of laughter and embarrassment for the 17-year-old niece, her stab at ancient history going immediately to Facebook, courtesy of the computer nerd nephew who never goes anywhere that he does not take along with him, the web… it is a game, if you’ve never played it, that rewards eclectic knowledge, straight-faced bluff, and impassioned argument, which favors me, bullshitter extraordinaire, the nephew in his second year of law school, and the computer savy nephew who’s developed bluster to a fine art… and as for the spaghetti, it’s a cheap feed for a crowd, easy to make, the sauce mostly cooking itself in a slow cooker, and we have a good recipe I inherited half a century ago from a fat Italian farmer in South Texas once a month or so, the games are on, if you’re around these parts in January, you’ll be welcome to join us  Born in 1947, poet, journalist, editor and publisher William Oandasan was a member of the Yuki tribe of the Round Valley Reservation in northwest California. He served as senior editor of American Indian Culture and Research Journal and issued his own A Journal of Contemporary Literature. He also taught contemporary American Indian poetry at UCLA and served as a member of the Multicultural Arts Panel of the California Arts Council, along with other arts organizations. Oandasan died in 1992. Words of Tayko-mol 1. from heart through mind into image the pulse of the four directions the voice of our blood the spirit of breath and words 2. from fresh currents of night air above manzanitas near the cemetery the words of ancient lips turn in our blood again Acoma For many distant travelers The way to Acoma is merely Interstate-40, A fourlane sear Of asphalt Stitched in between wire Fences and telephone lines, Running like a scar Across the flesh Of an ancient landscape; The almost never know The old way south by north Where you can fly today From a uranium stripmine To the sacred Sky City Standing on top White Rock Mesa. Corn and rituals predate The Christian mission there Like a breathing shrine. And the way to Acoma for many Is a place for curious pottery, Or a refreshment stop. But for those who still Travel the four directions, The way to Acoma Is always the way.  Christmas eve, 2010. things I’d rather not think about writing a poem on Christmas eve reminds me that I was a practicing Christian once; I practiced and practiced and practiced but never got it right so I cut back and became, like many of the Christians I know, a non-practicing Christian, and I non-practiced and non- practiced and never got it right so I quit all together leaving nothing I miss behind but Christmas joy, which is hard to sustain when all it’s about is picking non-religious Christmas cards and the most colorful wrapping paper and listening, politely, to Christmas songs for three months, mostly sung by over-the-hill, or, sometimes, dead, gents in sweaters roasting their moldy chestnuts, etc…. I mean, there is something truly uplifting about the whole Baby Jesus thing, I'm wearing my macho man shirt this morning, the let's-go-out-and-shoot-Bambi-shirt I bought at Walmart last year, it and another just like it except in a different color, evidence that even I, the complete rationalist, am prone to occasional lapses of what-the-hell-was-I-thinking the bright-colored hunting motif, dogs and guns and woody images, embarrasses me; to be seen in it makes me feel like a fraud since I haven't shot anything of an animal nature since I was ten years old, killing a sparrow with my bb gun, leaving a tiny, neatly ringed bb-sized hole right through the bird's head, a bright blaze of blood trickling from the side of the hole, a crimson trail brilliant in the summer sun and in my memory it's just not me, this shirt, just not in my nature, but it's cold outside and it was the warmest shirt I had already ironed this morning and I promise that's all there is to it, no subliminal pulse of murderous rage barely contained beneath this calm and pleasant countenance, this peaceable exterior, I promise... you can come out from behind the sofa now... I promise but, since I iron my own shirts, just don't ask me how this shirt got ironed in the first place there are things I'd rather not think about  Also known under her pseudonym Chiron Khanshendel, Wendy Rose is a poet, nonfiction writer, artist, educator, and anthropologist. She was born Bronwen Elizabeth Edwards in 1948 in Oakland, California. Though she is of Hopi and Miwok ancestry, Rose was raised in a predominately white community in San Francisco. Growing up in an urban environment far removed from reservation life and Native American relations gave her little to no access to her native roots as a child. Though her father is a full-blood Hopi, she was denied membership in her father’s tribe because ancestry is determined matrilineally. Her mother was partly Miwok, but refused to acknowledge her American Indian heritage. Rose began making her own path as a young woman when she dropped out of high school to go to San Francisco and join the American Indian Movement. From 1966 to 1980, Rose returned to her education, enrolling in various colleges and eventually earning a B.A. in anthropology in that same year. Two years later she got her M.A. in 1978 and enrolled in the doctoral program. During this period of her life, Rose published five volumes of poetry and completed her Ph.D. in anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley. Once she had returned to her schooling, Rose did not leave the world of academia again, going on to teach Native American and Ethnic studies first at the University of California, Berkeley from 1979 to 1983, then California State University, Fresno from 1983 to 1984 and finally at her current position in Fresno City College in 1984 where she is the Coordinator of the American Indian Studies Program and edited the American Indian Quarterly. Rose is a member of the American Federation of Teachers and has served as a facilitator for the Association of Non-Federally Recognized California Tribes. In addition, she also serves on the Modern Languages Association Commission on Languages and Literatures of America, Smithsonian Native Writers’ Series, Women’s Literature Project of Oxford University Press, and Coordination Council of Literary Magazines. Alaskan Fragments June 1981 - Summer Solstice 1. (from the air) Islands are green and blackest black, the water around them cobalt; clouds melt into glaciers that melt into mountains and canyons fill silently with white flesh waiting. 2. (from the air) Islands more islands: great hands push water between them blackening fjords against the never-setting sun and placing deep into tongues the teeth of copper and caves. Fish become black on black and spread already their mouths as if eager for the bone hook, the spear's thrust and the smoking rack. 3. Fairbanks) At some point during the round day the blue breath of the mountain range jaggedly south burns toward July rehearsing for a dance that will last sixty days - resting from arctic fevers and tentative rumbles and rivers that break into thousands of arrows, ice that runs clear then explodes into mist, valleys that become a fog of insects floated over the beaver ponds like nets and the frantic clicking of round aspen leaves like fragile coins in the afternoon rain, the evening breeze. 4. (Fairbanks - 2:00 a.m.) Brought to the window by a brilliant flash not a snowbank stolen home in June but the Tanana shining with midnight's red sun, early summer's great moon that dances on the river, turning to platinum the whole of the Fairbanks basin. This is Drum Dance turning toward town from a dozen Yukon villages, a thousand native throats. 5. Fairbanks - during the worst forest fire in ten years) Smoke settles all afternoon and toward evening touches the aspens; the red fog drops like a great roan horse its old flanks bending brittle and groaning down among the dimming streetlights, the vapor trails receding in the once-blue-white sky, the Chena like a snake curled about its eggs. But inside these tightest of bonds we continue to sweat changes, heat ourselves into water and dream of the future ice on which the spirits will dance and quarrel. Southeast low mountains of the Alaskan Range grip the sun to blur summer smoke along broken highways and the silver pipeline covered with graffiti and blood. Old women are leaving the village now; men bring out their hatchets and shovels, preparing the way back to winter and to home. 6. (from the air -flying south a long look back: the sun is sloughing its salmon skin along the northernmost horizon, a line so thin that it steps through the dark like a seal slips through the water. And what remains: a dissolving touch or echo of whispers begun long ago but kept into summer remaining to melt smaller and smaller into the sea.  Though this poem was published in 2000, almost exactly a year after I wrote it in final form, it concerns a night a week before Christmas, 1964. I think I probably wrote the first version of it in 1965. departures snow pelts the parking lot with cotton ball ferocity, muffling street and city noises, cloaking the bustle of early evening in a mantle of winter white from behind our frosted plate glass curtain, we watch, and draw closer in sympathetic chill softly, simultaneously, we join the others in quiet carols. spring is the proper time for leaving friends and lovers, when the earth and a reborn universe demand there be new ones to comfort us but Christmas... Christmas is a sad time for long , probably final, departures  Next, I have three poets. The first is Steve Crow, of Cherokee and Irish ancestry, he was born in Alabama in 1949. He began writing poetry in high school, then went on to Louisiana State University to major in English and creative writing before entering the M.F.A. program at Bowling Green. In 1976 he began doctoral work in English at the University of Michigan, eventually developing and teaching a survey course in contemporary Native American literature there. Revival Snow is a mind falling, a continuous breath of climbs, loops, spirals, dips into the earth like white fireflies wanting to land, finding a wind between houses, diving like moths into their own light so that one wonders if snow is a wing's long memory across winter. Water Song Water travels a long shot into our house. When we find a leaf or the wing of a dragonfly in the water we pour it out. To return means something else must die and be rejected. Or if the water is pure, we taste nothing strong and nothing decays. Earle Thompson was born in 1950 and grew up on the Yakima Indian Reservation in Washington. Although information about him is limited on the web, it is clear that he was a prolific poet and that after spending some time in prison he was, at least for a period of time, homeless. He died in 2006 and an obituary is on line which makes it clear he was beloved by many who knew him and his poetry. Song Woman sits on her porch knitting and begins singing a Shakerhouse song: Hoy-hoy-ee... Hoy-ee-hoy... Young Pah-temas rests on the steps watching a bough drifting inland while the current tries taking it to sea. Cedar bough resists, and in the boy's eyes it becomes a dugout canoe - long, with dark-haired men naked to the waist paddling, singing an old Lummi song. Pah-temas and grandmother watch seahawk dive from fine mist, swoop upon a glint transformed into fish Sudden splashing breaks stillness of morning. No Deposit Sometimes you feel like a bottle sitting by itself; no return, just empty; ready to be thrown away. Also born in 1950, Ray A. Young Bear was born in Iowa. He is a poet and novelist of the Mesquakie tribe. Growing up on the Meskwaki Tribal Settlement in Iowa, he was encouraged to learn English by his maternal grandmother, and he began to translate his poems into that language. His work was first published in 1968 and has been widely published since. The Language of Weather The summer rain isn't here yet, but I hear and see the approaching shadow of its initial messenger; Thunder. The earth's bright horizon sends a final sunbeam directly toward me, skimming across the tops of clouds and hilly woodland. All in one moment, in spite of my austerity, everything is aligned: part land, part cloud, part sky, part sun and part self. I am the only one to witness this renascence. Before darkness replaces the light in my eyes,I mediate briefly on the absence of religious importunity; no acknowledgement whatsoever for the Factors which my my existence possible. My parents, who are hurrying to overturn the reddish-brown dirt around the potato plants, begin to talk about the rumbling din. "Their mouths are opening. See that everyone in the household releases parts of ourselves to our Grandfathers." While raindrops begin to cool my face and arms, lightning breaks a faraway cottonwood in half; small clouds of red garden dust are kicked into the frantic air by grasshoppers in retreat. I think of the time I stood on this same spot years ago, but it was under the moonlight and I was watching this beautiful electrical force dance above another valley. In the daylight distance, a stray spirit whose guise is a Whirlwind, spins and attempts to communicate from its ethereal loneliness.  This is a short poem I wrote while walking my dog on a dead-cold winter night between Christmas and the new year in 2003. beacon crescent moon hangs white against the midnight sky, its gentle arc a beacon to the weary and day-worn And here's another short poem of mine, this one from a very lonely Christmas in 1969, long ago, and far, far away. listen now... how quiet... the sound of a thousand air conditioners suddenly stilled and our island is one with the desert-blowing night  A. Sadongei, Kiowa and Tohono O'odham, is the last poet in the book, and, born in 1959, the youngest. She received a B.A. degree in communications from Lewis and Clark University in Portland, Oregon. While there, she received the Academy of American Poets College Prize. She served as director of a Native American arts service organization, and as training coordinator for the Department of Public Programs at the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian. She lives in Arizona. For Carlos Charles Bucillio I The noise began in my belly and was pushed up and out of my throat. It hurled itself against the furniture chairs and windows. This death song had begun high in the hills; I had to listen to it traveling home over the mountains and down the coastline. I had nowhere to rest no one to turn and talk to - the one I knew was gone. II I remember the rabbit I saw when I drove along the desert floor. I felt like I was on the bottom of the ocean inside the salty water. Carlos used to say that's what the place would have looked like if the village hadn't given the lives of two children to stop the flowing of the water - their small bodies turned to foam. III He's buried near his father in the small, desert village. Always a breeze blows among the dwellings, cooling the hot, dry days and bending back creosote bushes. Sometimes the breeze gently rocks homemade hammocks warm with sleeping babies. IV Sounds move in and around in front of each other, dodge the bushes, glide up over my shoulder into my ear. I remember sitting and waiting for breezes to stir the corrugated rusty tin of the barn that smelled of hay and sounded like mice.  Seems the end of the year brings out the memoirist in me. I wrote this one today. meeting with the movers and shakers I went to a meeting once with a United States Senator at the late-in-the-evening office of a prominent businessman whose name I shall not mention because, despite his mountainous conviction of his own lasting importance, I can not remember it anymore it was a real dog-butt- sniffing affair, all the movers and shakers rushing to sniff the Senator’s eminent heinie when he came into the room, a problem for some of the older movers and shakers, the ones with the rickety tickety backs, worn from forever bending for ring-kissing and heinie- sniffing, a paradox, it’s true, but often the case that the more one moves and shakes the more such kissing and sniffing seems to be required, a problem in this instance because the great man, though his name was Tower, was in real life, as opposed to Washington myths, a tiny bit of a fellow, with an ass way too close to the ground for sniffing and kissing by the more archaic acolytes, problematic to be sure, made more so by the Senator’s condition… some kind and gentle people are known, under the influence of excessive alcohol, to become what other imbibers call “mean drunks” but the Senator was opposite of that, being instead a mean sober, and he hadn’t had a drink of any alcoholic natrure since breakfast and was feeling skunk-mean and mad-dog-rabid… the Senator flew to England periodically to get his Savile Row suits, tailored to fit his diminutive frame and, right-wing, Texas, Republican academic that he was, had minimal regard for persons, however otherwise accomplished and highly regarded by others, who did not spend $,5000 for a suit of clothes and, as for the poor and downtrodden, they will be always with us, he often said, and that’s certainly no reason for a hard working, right-wing, Texas, Republican academic not to get his cut of the action…. the subject of this meeting of movers and shakers (I clarify that though not a mover and shaker myself, I did sometimes travel in those circles) was about a plea for federal approval of construction of an off-shore docking facility for supertankers and a series of underwater pipelines to deliver the off-loaded crude to the refineries that lined our harbor it was a complicated and, for those like me with no dog in the fight, boring subject, an opinion shared by the Senator, who up to that point had not seen where his cut was coming from, an element of the deal that would be clarified for him at another, smaller meeting to which I and most others in the room would not be invited… in the end, the supertanker offshore dock was never built, for many good reasons and for some political and the Senator was killed in an airplane crash, deeply mourned by family and not many others, I suspect and so ended a mover and shaker meeting where no one moved and nothing shook, a good meeting for ass-kisser morale and, in the end, for me, remembered for being in the meeting with no responsibility for the result  Okay, as mentioned earlier this is the last "Here and Now" post until at least after Christmas. Everything, as usual belongs to those who wrote it. My stuff, with proper credit, belongs to whoever wants it. And,as you might guess, I'm still selling books. Specifically, these books. "Always to the Light"  "Goes Around, Comes Around"  "Pushing Clouds Against the Wind"  And For those of a print-bent, available on Amazon "Seven Beats a Second"  |
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