V. Explosion

    The highway near Okemah, Oklahoma exploded.

                                             There are reasons for everything.

    Maybe             there is a new people, coming forth

                            being born from the center of the earth,

                            like us, but another tribe.

    Maybe             they will be another color that no one

                            has ever seen before. Then they might be hated,

                            and live in Muskogee on the side of the tracks

                            that Indians live on. (And they will be the

                            ones to save us.)

    Maybe             there are lizards coming out of rivers of lava

                            from the core of this planet,

                                                                  coming to bring rain

                            to dance for the corn,

                            to set fields of tongues slapping at the dark

                            earth, a kind of a dance.

    But maybe the explosion was horses,

                                               bursting out of the crazy earth

    near Okemah. They were a violent birth,

    flew from the ground into trees

                                                      to wait for evening night

      mares to come after them:

                    then      into the dank wet fields of Oklahoma

                    then      their birth cords tied into the molten heart

                    then      they travel north and south, east and west

                    then      into wet while sheets at midnight when everyone

                                 sleeps and the baby dreams of swimming in the

                                 bottom of the muggy river.

                    then      into frogs who have come out of the earth to

                                 see for rain

                    then      a Creek woman who dances shaking the seeds in

                                 her bones

                    then      South Dakota, Mexico, Japan, and Manila

                    then      into Miami to sweep away the knived faces of

                                 hatred

    Some will not see them.

    But some will see the horses with their hearts of sleeping volcanoes

    and will be rocked awake

                                             past their bodies

                                                    to see who they have become.