Anasazi
Anasazi,
Anasazi,
tucked up in clefts in the cliffs
growing strict fields of corns and beans
sinking deeper and deeper in earth
up to your heaps in Gods
your head all turned to eagle-down
& lightning for knees and elbows
your eyes full of pollen
the smell of bats.
the flavour of sandstone
grit on the tongue.
women
birthing
at the foot of ladders in the dark.
trickling streams in hidden canyons
under the cold rolling desert
corn-basket wide-eyed
red baby
rock lip home,
Anasazi
The Way West, Underground
The split-cedar
smoked salmon
cloudy days of Oregon,
the thick fir forests.
Black Bear heads uphill in
Plumas county,
round bottom scuttling through willows -
The Bear Wife moves up the coast.
where blackberry bambles
ramble in the burns.
And around the curve of islands
foggy volcanoes
on, to North Japan. The bears
& fish-spears of the Ainu.
Gilyak.
Mushroom-vision healer,
single flat drum,
from long before China.
Women with drums who fly over Tibet.
Following forests west, and
rolling, following grassland,
tracking bears and mushrooms,
eating berries all the way.
In Finland finally took a bath:
like redwood sweatlodge on the Klamath -
all the Finns in moccasins and
pointy hats with dots of white,
netting, trapping, bathing,
singing holding hands, the while
see-sawing on a bench, a look of love -
Karhu - Bjorn - Braun - Bear
[lightning rainbow great cloud tree
dialogs of birds]
Europa. 'The West'.
the bears are gone
except Brunhilde?
or elder wilder goddesses reborn - will race
the streets of France and Spain
with automatic guns -
in Spain,
Bears and Bison,
Red Hands with missing fingers,
Red mushroom labyrinths;
lightning-bolt mazes,
Painted in caves,
Underground.
No Matter, Never Mind
The Father is the Void
The Wife Waves
Their child is Matter.
Matter makes it with his mother
And their child is Life,
a daughter.
The Daughter is the Great Mother
Who, with her father / brother Matter
as her lover,
Gives birth to the Mind.
Coyote Valley Spring
Cubs
tumble in the damp leaves
Deer, bear, squirrel.
fresh winds scour the
spring stars.
rocks crumble
deep mud hardens
under heavy hills.
shifting things
birds, weeds,
slip through the air
through eyes and ears,
Coyote valley. Olema
in the spring.
white and solemn toloeche flower
and far out in the tamal
a lost people
float
in tiny tule boats.
