(For South Wind)

 
Kiss your face

The String of Hearts tumbled

And fell downward

Into your leatherwork

The promises of the Plains

Drains the color from your face

Winds speak of the

Separating                baskets, pottery

Hair pipe, straight cut

Torn, turquoise, quill, under whites

Corn pollen, trade-clothe

 

Red the Mescal, Beaded Whip

                      She Always Comes at the End of Things

 

Scalp shirt and, “I’ll be with you til my dying day.”

You vowed, putting her upon your shirt

Along side your sons and daughters

Carry the world as you sing the holiest

Of songs among the men’s societies

 

                              Scatter

The Wind makes its marks

Looks you dead in the eye

And you know

To set up the drum

 

Blanket on the ground

Vibration that is flight

Moving the moon

With that song

 

Auntie wasn’t sick

Just hung over

But still we sang

Set up the drum

 
“I’m the Arrow, String and the Bow, I am the Man who Brings the Extra Arrows, and says, ‘Take them all, and here take my bow as well, I can always make another..”

 
That Summer in the Pines

“..go fetch the arrow!”

 
As it shot behind the old fence

No one saw that big dog there

 
“BOW WOW”, said the dog

And the Wolf Boy grabbed

The arrow, laughing, ran back

To the People

 
Blackberries

Staining his lips with

The Sundown, gripping his

Bow with them Choctaw boys

 
The Intertribal-bling-bling

Sing-sing, Kiowa lullaby had all the

Old Ladies smiling, with their shawls

Wiping the grease from their faces

As the sign on the soup pot read

“NO SALT!”

 
~ North Wind