Coyote Chimes and Cradle Cries

"What is life?  It is the little shadow that runs across the 

grass and loses itself in the sunset."  ~ Blackfoot Quote

Weekends

at Gram Bessie’s

below Wing Grade

where Sweetwater Creek

notions an ease

to the bottom

or rages

against Nature's cheatgrass

and obsidion banks.

We swam in Lute's pond

maundered hillsides

trudged up

to the buryin’ ground,

a rich, dirt table

sieged, all four sides,

by soy crops

guarding a duck legged valley

where Mother Earth

eructed life's origins

from within chasmic storms.

This terre moccasin hill

of buried Indigenous,

monuments     simple

conceded by birth,

dearth, by death toll,

forgotten Ids                                     

carved into limestone 

reminders,

parsed into side-by-sides

for soul-less leather sheaths

of plethoral First Nations

raised on birth dirt,

mournfully reminisced.

Sorrowful Coyote chimes,

alongside cradle cries,

forever echoing beneath

aged alabaster stones

infused through my bedroom's 

canted window pane.

Young and shunned

for anomalous nature, 

a boothill comforter

plucking Indian Celery

florets to lay beside dead babes

while crooning lullabies

imprinted on mind

by mother sparrows

sans schema or score.

Upon periods scribed

face of God rocks

until end of sorrow's sand

I will shower heart songs

over saint's hill of moccasins

where my two girls Owl Dance

till sun and moon

pass, whispering Shibboleth.