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.