As Children Know

Elm branches radiate green heat, blackbirds stiffly strut across fields. Beneath bedroom wood floor, I feel earth— bread in an oven that slowly swells, simmering my Navajo blanket thread-crust as white-feathered and corn-tasseled Corn Dancers rise in a line, follow my calf, vanish in a rumple and surface at my knee-cliff, chanting. Wearing shagged buffalo headgear, Buffalo Dancer chases Deer Woman across Sleeping Leg mountain. Branches of wild rose trees rattle seeds. Deer Woman fades into hills of beige background. Red Bird of my heart thrashes wildly after her. What a stupid man I have been! How good to let imagination go, step over worrisome events, those hacked logs tumbled about in the driveway. Let decisions go! Let them blow like school children’s papers against the fence, rattling in the afternoon wind. This Red Bird of my heart thrashes within the tidy appearance I offer the world, topples what I erect, snares what I set free, dashes what I’ve put together, indulges in things left unfinished, and my world is left, as children know, left as toys after dark in the sandbox.