Those tracks in the snow, could it be
great-great-grandmother Shouts Like A Deer—
who jumps in my blood, who courses
impatient for freedom through my neck and legs?
I was made on the lake shore, but the lake alone I forgive.
These shaggy curls mimic the cold hemlocks
hung above glints chopped by wind that moves over,
as it moves through the mouth of the clouds.
Among bare-fingered pepper bushes, stinky as civets,
we are the generation with all the wrong names
although we can name the moons that made us
and can suck the light off the stars that fall close by.
Go spit in the lake, preferred home of ice and foam,
where it is not difficult to call back happiness.