From darkness, from my bed,
lightning opened the night.
The world was green one moment,
with cottonwoods leafed out.
But darkness is a full thing,
another country.
In it, the human bone
might be the nothing people make of another
in the quickened nights of a history I don’t want
to remember those histories of human bones in my mind
but there they live like a flash of light, the memories,
the head of Osceola on his physician’s bedpost,
the jaw of Chief Joseph an ashtray for a dentist
the breast of a gentle woman become some white man’s bag
And did anything keep this from happening again,
from disappearing others,
moments of darkness
belittling the world
moments of light
to keep us from entering
those dark, true memories
I am a mere woman, the dust and ash of history survived.
I’m the future some of my old ones lived toward,
in all its light,
Some of you
must go on.
Thank you, world,
for any brief opening
in the darkness,
for any moment of light
that reveals a world’s beauty
in the full dark,
for lightning
from a storm not human
when it strikes.