We are the earth, she told me that day we sat at her kitchen table.
(Everyone came to her table from the four directions to hear her stories.)
“One day I will be gone,” she said.
And what will you remember of what I tell you?”
I realize now that she was the very Earth herself, talking.
I believe in the sun.
In the tangle of human failures of fear, greed, and forgetfulness, the sun gives me clarity.
When explorers first encountered my people, they called us heathens, sun worshippers.
They didn’t understand that the sun is a relative, and illuminates our path on this earth.
After dancing all night in a circle we realize that we are a part of a larger sense of stars and planets dancing with us overhead.
When the sun rises at the apex of the ceremony, we are renewed.
There is no mistaking this connection, though Walmart might be just down the road.
Humans are vulnerable and rely on the kindnesses of the earth and the sun; we exist together in a sacred field of meaning.
Our earth is shifting. We can all see it.
I hear from my Inuit and Yupik relatives up north that everything has changed. It’s so hot; there is not enough winter.
Animals are confused. Ice is melting.
The quantum physicists have it right; they are beginning to think like Indians: everything is connected dynamically at an intimate level.
When you remember this, then the current wobble of the earth makes sense. How much more oil can be drained,
Without replacement; without reciprocity?
I walked out of a hotel room just off Times Square at dawn to find the sun.
It was the fourth morning since the birth of my fourth granddaughter.
This was the morning I was to present her to the sun, as a relative, as one of us. It was still dark, overcast as I walked through Times Square.
I stood beneath a twenty-first century totem pole of symbols of multinational corporations, made of flash and neon.
The sun rose up over the city but I couldn’t see it amidst the rain.
Though I was not at home, bundling up the baby to carry her outside,
I carried this newborn girl within the cradleboard of my heart.
I held her up and presented her to the sun, so she would be recognized as a relative,
So that she won’t forget this connection, this promise,
So that we all remember, the sacredness of life.
“One way to look at it,” he told me one day as I sawed through scales to make muscle for flying, “is that we are all lost, we were already lost the day we were born. In music, we can become tragically and beautifully lost . . . and found again.”
All the way to Nome, I trace the shadow of the plane as it walks
Over turquoise lakes made by late spring breakup
Of the Bering Sea.
The plane is so heavy with cargo load it vibrates our bones.
Like the pressure made by light cracking ice.
Below I see pockets of marrow where seabirds nest.
Mothers are so protective they will dive humans.
I walk from the tarmac and am met by an old friend.
We drive to the launching place
And see walrus hunters set out toward the sea.
We swing to the summer camps where seal hangs on drying frames.
She takes me home.
I watch her son play video games on break from the university.
This is what it feels like, says her son, as we walk up tundra,
Toward a herd of musk ox, when you spirit walk.
There is a shaking, and then you are in mystery.
Little purple flowers come up from the permafrost.
A newborn musk ox staggers around its mother’s legs.
I smell the approach of someone with clean thoughts.
She is wearing designs like flowers, and a fur of ice.
She carries a basket and digging implements.
Her smell is sweet like blossoms coming up through the snow.
The spirit of the tundra stands with us, and we collect sunlight together,
We are refreshed by small winds.
We do not need history in books to tell us who we are
Or where we come from, I remind him.
Up here, we are near the opening in the Earth’s head, the place where the spirit leaves and returns.
Up here, the edge between life and death is thinner than dried animal bladder.
(FOR ANUQSRAAQ AND QITUVITUAQ)
NOME, ALASKA, 2011
Where we lived, the settlers built their houses. Where we drew fresh water, the oil companies sucked oil. Where deer ran in countless numbers, we have a new mall. Where the healing plants thrived; the river is burning. Now, a fence cuts the road home. Next the sky will be tethered, and we will pay for air.
That night we headed to the bar
My jones was for the music humping through the door.
No stars yet in the ache of the sky, and
A rat hung in the mouth of the fat cat.
Everyone was there in each burrow of booth, including
Spook and the knot of Indian school brats.
It was the end of the week, the end of the line,
We’d drink to that or anything else that made us laugh.
Everyone had a name that could not be spoken.
Every given name harbored an origin story.
There was no doubt as to the root of the matter.
Spook got his name on the street,
Nez from an ancestor tall as male rain,
And mine was from a grandfather who fought without thought
To return us back rightfully to our beloved homelands.
In this bar, we traded despair for disco dance vision, made art of trouble,
While boxcars filled with uranium slid up and down
The king’s highway along the rushing, shallow river; the yellow chaos
Metal made us sick and downward mental.
It was all about a Saturday night at the Senate Lounge
Which wasn’t the senate and there was no lounging
I promised Spook I’d never forget him.
He forgot me instead. Ayyyeee.
Nez found God then forgot where she had left him.
And this was only the beginning of the evening.
I left my seat to dance and found it taken over by another.
We’d never seen her here at ground zero of the city, but
We’d all heard the story of her killed lover: Silkwood,
Chased down and killed by the monster Cur-Muggy.
She told us the story as she checked the door, sporadic.
Beneath our bent heads we made a listening temple.
She could not stop to rest or they would get her.
We would all die, she prophesied, of a multi-corporate army,
Of suits in boardrooms who paid workers nothing to do the dirty.
By closing, we were all a state or two from madness.
Everyone was making moves, or begging rides for the next crazy party.
The DJ took a breather, as he packed it up for another hard-up city.
We offered her refuge; instead, she fled.
She only took what she could carry.
I don’t remember her name, or what compelled me to forget
So drenched that night we all were from tough knowledge
Spilling out across the dark earth
In this vulnerable, pulsing mother field.
Let’s not shame our eyes for seeing. Instead, thank them for their bravery.
Dead umbrella—broken wings
Carryout Styrofoam—chicken grease
Crow rain—orange peel in beak.
Blue wad of gum—one day I will sleep.
Ferns drinking rain—I am thirsty for sun.
Winds from up north—lounge here in this mist.
Black squirrel on a slag of stone—carry me home.
Giant tree roots are highway of ant trade routes—where do I belong?
Crisp holly with red berries—we are holy with hope.
Another dead umbrella—we are all getting wet.
Winds’ cousins—fly up behind them.
Clouds slip to earth—
All this walking and I’m not getting far.
Water spirit feeling . . . round my head—
Where will I go when I am dead?
VANCOUVER, BC
Midnight is a horn player warmed up tight for the last set. One a.m. is a drummer who knows how to lay it sweet. Two a.m. is a guitar player who is down on his luck. Three a.m. is a bass player walking the floor crazy for you. Four a.m. is a singer in silk who will do anything for love. Five a.m. is kept for the birds. Six a.m. is the cleaning crew smoking cigarettes while they wait for the door to open. Seven a.m. we’re having breakfast together at the diner that never closes. Eight a.m. and we shut it down, though the clock keeps running, all through the town.
Charlie was in Venice, wheeling his granddaughter in a stroller
Down the boardwalk, through noisy spring crowds.
He was the happiest he’d ever been. He was with the baby,
The sun, and the ocean who busied herself carrying time
And breaking it against sand.
In the sky over Charlie and the baby were flights coming in from Hawaii, China, and other lands.
They circled like reachable stars.
Men fished from the pier; mothers unfolded picnics,
As children played hide-and-seek.
In the blue breathed immense light beings.
From their eyes, we were lost and small.
Charlie called and asked me how I was doing—
I probably recited the usual, you know: I am living a life
That takes me almost everywhere. Jet lag. Band practice. The kids. Poems.
Charlie was weary with the poverty of making a living of comedy.
(We laughed.)
I could smell sea-riding wind, could hear the baby’s laughter.
New plants were growing from the grief of my mother’s recent death.
(We listened.)
As for poets, I said, it’s about the same.
We talked what we always talked:
History, saxophones, kids, words, Floyd, Buffy, Jennifer Jesus, healing, airplanes, Floyd, prayers, philosophy, Indians, Indians, and why we’re in the predicament we’re in.
Every word that’s ever said tries to find a way to live.
You’re gone now, and I’m still in this predicament called living, Charlie.
I imagine things don’t change much when you cross the line.
You’re still you.
And I’m still here at the other end of this long, long wave, listening.
When I walk over to join you in the two-step, you’d better say yes the old woman told Death. Death laughed. For her, death was a fine-looking native man. He wore old-style buckskin. She took his arm. He was a good dancer. They two-stepped all the way to the end of the circle of this earth fire.
Had-It-Up-to-Here Round Dance (for two voices) with Charlie Hill
Way-ya-ha-yah, way-ya-ha-ya
Way-ya-ha-yah, way-ya-ha-ya-ho
I don’t like your girlfriend and her high-heeled shoes
And her skirt up to here
And her blonde hair down to there
When you dance right past with her it gives me the blues
You have the sweetest step in double time it’s just not fair
How can I tell you that I love you when you don’t even care—
I don’t like your boyfriend and his white man ways.
You hold him in your shawl it makes me crazed
I like the way you step so high beside me
But how can I tell you babe when you don’t talk to me
Way-ya-ha-ya, way-ya-ha-yo
You used to dance, you’d step so high . . .
We used to come to this place all the time because everybody knew you
Now it seems like too many people know you here
Now how can I tell you these things, you don’t even talk to me anymore, you don’t even call me up anymore, you don’t look at me anymore, you don’t even see me anymore—
But if you come close to me I’ll tell you how much I love you honey, how much I love you honey hi yah
I don’t like your girlfriend
But
I never liked any of your girlfriends
But
None of them
But
Not your Sioux
Not your Comanche sweetheart
But
Not your shining Shoshone
But
Not your get-down Dineh
Not your too-fast girlfriend
But but
Not your too-fast girlfriend with her um up to here and her uh down to there
Her here down . . .
But but
To everywhere, it looks bad on me
How could you do this to me?
Are you done?
Man
Just just just just dance
Get down Get funky
Get down, Get Creek
Way-ya-ha-ya, way-ya-ha-yo
If you come close to me honey hey yah
If you come close to me honey hi yah
I will have to tell you
I will have to tell you
How much I love you, honey . . .
Are you done? Jeesh
Too much
Went out for a couple of drinks
Party
A couple of smokes
Not enough
It didn’t mean anything
I mean, I mean . . .
Not enough
I woke up on the floor with her
Uptime, too much
With my arms around her, but she
Downtime, too much
Passed out, and I was just trying to see if she was
Downtime
If she was still breathing
Runaround
You read things into it
Man . . .
“Through these doors walk some of the finest people in the world,” read the sign over that Indian bar in downtown Albuquerque. The dance floor was always packed with a sea of cowboy hats. They made a felt sky. We’d head out before last call, before the fights. We drove up to the cliffs in a pack—to sing all night at the Forty-Nine. We were those fine people, just a little lonely for home.
One Day There Will Be Horses (a traveling song)
You stood at my door, peered out from the wreck
Of a three-day drunk.
Your eyes said good man, works with hands
And wants a chance.
You wanted a ride to the other side of town.
No way to walk the bridge over Polecat Creek.
One day I will be rich enough
One day I will be lucky enough
One day I will have horses enough to marry with
We talked about relationships, jobs, and all the winners.
You laughed and kicked back
In my truck, in the afternoon sun.
You asked me to let you off near an overpass, north of town.
A creek ran parallel to the highway.
There were trees bending down
To cup the winds.
One day I will be rich enough
One day I will be lucky enough
One day I will have horses enough to marry with
When I looked back, you were walking west
Work shoes and tools over your shoulder.
A little rain began to fall from sparse, lucky clouds.
Did you find a place to sleep?
You light the dark as you sing your traveling song:
One day I will be rich enough
One day I will be lucky enough
One day I will have horses enough to marry with
Hey ya ha, hey ya ho
Hey ya ha, hey ya ho
One day, I will have words enough
One day, I will have songs enough
One day, I will be tough enough
One day, I will have love enough
To go home.
When I returned to my ancestral grounds there stood my relatives welcoming me home. We danced all summer. We visited all the other grounds, sharing food, songs, and nights that made concentric circles of stories on the road to sunrise.
Last dance and the night is almost over
One last round under the starry sky
We’re all going home someway, somehow when it’s over
Hey e yah, hey e yay, aye e yah aye e yay
If you’ve found love in the circle then hold onto it, not too tight
If you have to let love go then let it go— Keep on dancing
I don’t care if you’re married sixteen times
I’ll get you yet
Goin’ home goin’ home
I’m from Oklahoma got no one to call mine
A love supreme, a love supreme
Everybody wants a love supreme
When the dance is over sweetheart, take me home in your one-eyed Ford
Or better yet, let’s just sit here under the stars wrapped in my shawl, and figure out how to get our homelands back—
Goin’ home goin’ home goin’ home
It’s time to go home
Be kind to all you meet along the way
For all the good times
Good night, sleep tight
Goin’ home, goin’ home
Goin’ home
Drive safely, or better yet, don’t drive at all
Don’t forget: hold somebody’s hand through the dark.
Goin’ home goin’ home
Kul-ku-ce cv-na-kē, hv-ya-yi-ca-res
Kul-ku-ce cv-na-kē, hv-ya-yi-ca-res
Kul-ku-ce cv-na-kē, hv-ya-yi-ca-res
Kul-ke-kvs, kul-ke-kvs, kul-ke-kvs
Our Mvskoke new year is inherently about the acknowledgment and honoring of the plant world. We become in harmony with each other. Our worlds are utterly interdependent. All of our decisions matter, not just to seven generations and more of human descendants, but to the seven or more plant descendants and animal descendants. We make sacrifices to take care of each other. To understand each other is profound beyond human words.
This is what I am singing.
The First Day Without a Mother
In the hour of indigo, between sleeping and wake—
A beloved teacher sits up on the funeral pyre—
He smiles at me through flames that are dancing as they eat—
I will see you again, is one of the names for blue—
A color beyond the human sky of mind—
One third up the ladder of blue is where we sit for grief—
I was abandoned by lovers, by ideas that leaped ahead of time, and by a father looking for a vision he would never find—
Do not leave me again, I want to cry as the blue fire takes my teacher.
His ashes cool in my hands.
I’m too proud to let go the tears; they are still in me.
I keep looking back.
Maybe I have turned to salt. It burns blue, like the spirits who have already
Started to call me home, up over the last earthy hill broken through with starts of blue flowers that heal the wounded heart.
Chickadee sings at dawn.
I sit up in the dark drenched in longing.
I am carrying over a thousand names for blue that I didn’t have at dusk.
How will I feed and care for all of them?