Category Archives: ghost dance

Master, where are your bones tonight?

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Object from the exhibition We call them Vikings produced by The Swedish History Museum

Master, where are your bones tonight?
I heard the coyotes keening as the moon rose;
and the heavy air brought the scent
of burgeoning prairie grasses.
Summer is coming on fast,
and faster every year.

Master, where are your bones tonight?
You went into the desert, again and again, and then
one night you never came home.
We knew why, we had brought you there—
brought your body and your ghost: your life
had already leaked out of you, into hospital tubes, and was gone.
We left you there in the desert,
to reconcile with the Earth.

I had a recurring dream after you died:
Coyote, as a lark, was playing a reel
on a flute made from your shinbone.
His eyes looked sad and he was dancing
a few feet above the earth.
His eyes looked sad. But—you know—
with Coyote, you never can tell.

In my dream, if it was mine,
summer was always coming on fast, and the prairie grasses
whipped in a playful dance
until I woke. And summer came.

I haven’t had that dream in years.
Just tonight, though, the rising moon caught me wondering—
Where are your bones tonight, Master?

 

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— bent stick in the path, ridging

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I.

– bent stick in the path, ridging
the dust

where the sun
has been beating down

ten thousand hours
since last it rained

if you were a snake

I’d know
what to do
with you

tip my hat
wish you good hunting.

II.

First a red
tailed hawk
juking from
treetrunk

to tall grass

under the dark canopy

and next I, emerging, see

coyotes
flashing against the sky.

I don’t understand this world
anymore.

 

Coyote Pounce by Justin

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Nuisance crow

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The open Gate - 5321539250_99af96dab1_z

Nuisance crow
on an old fencepost:

green field behind;
brown hills in the distance;

gravel road,
deadleaf trees,
white sky,
world all around —

when did it all become
not worth a mention?

I fear my sixth decade
will make me an old man yet.

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and the night hold no memories

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nighttime 08-29-2017 +contrast

and the night hold no memories
but what we can read from it
time is not now
nor am I time’s ghost

read not by dint of a writing
since words are water
O hush of crickets mother me home
like matins like a bell

she is gone, gone to the sea
is gone to it, gone forever
and now every black shadow
seems a good place to hide

O hush and mother me home
like an awkward drum at night-time
like an empty coat
in a room full of empty coats

gigantic hush of crickets
and the moon giving no light
to see these black streets
only the intersections lit up

to see again from this height
between the crossed streets the shadows
darkness dimly lit
the moon

meanwhile all of them
are joining their way homeward
two and by two
two and by two

all are parting the cool air
O and when it closes behind them
they are come home
they are arrived

 

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The Toy

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15195686643_64036dc3b9_b_d

It was a witch’s toy,
that’s what they said.
She made it, they said,
and so everything that happened must have been her doing.

Some people said it was made of darkness and old clothes.
Some said the wind whistled through it.
Some said it had old dry bones in it,
some said they were human bones.

She not being a witch, so she said,
it was no witch’s toy, whatever it was.
She had seen her son playing with just such a toy,
that’s the reason she made it, she said.

He was playing with it as he ran and laughed
between the green grass
and the blue, blue, blue sky
—oh, it was so blue!

That was how it was, she said,
after he died
and she danced and danced.
That was what she saw, she said, just before the vision

ended like a snapped-off twig

 

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