WEBVTT

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Two more poems, and one
is for my husband Bill.

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And this poem I wrote in Montana
when we lived in Montana.

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It's called "Meditations
Beside Kootenai Creek."

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And I was talking with Terry
on the phone this morning

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and we were at Joy
Harjo's craft lecture.

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I don't know what
you would call that,

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Joy, it was just this beautiful
presentation yesterday.

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And Terry was saying
that she loved the way

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that you integrate poetry with
everything in the universe,

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that everything is connected
in a way, the spiritual

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and the mundane and
everything working together

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on every level.

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And I think that's what
us poets try to do.

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I remember Galway Kinnell
saying once in a craft lecture--

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and it was nothing about
craft, but it was all

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about writing poetry.

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And he said, "we spend our whole
lives praying toward the one

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poem we'll write."

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At the time I thought, whoa.

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I was young.

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I thought, uh-oh.

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Maybe I should go
back to bartending.

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But no, he was right.

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He was right.

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"Meditations Beside
Kootenai Creek.

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Sometimes I become what I
least desire, old as bone,

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uncomprehending as
the memory of pain.

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Perhaps dusk comes
into a room and a woman

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rattles up out of my throat.

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Her eyes empty as
candles set aside

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for the dead, who no
longer care for such light.

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Her flesh gone to the birds.

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It is then in gray light
she tells me my skin sags.

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My heart is incomplete
in its beatings.

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I haven't learned to love
as much as the stars who

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are at least not cruel.

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Then as if in a dream of fire,
along a foggy ridge I walk out,

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hands sprouting green
flames, eyes not

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blind enough from blue smoke.

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And I hear from its
sad shadow in wet grass

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the sudden up cry
of a meadowlark.

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And I believe I will
never be alone again.

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Listening to the wild applause
of water as it clarifies rocks,

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we step across.

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We hear what we'd name Western
Tanager, song sparrow, Lazuli

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Bunting and over a silver
patch of river, dim and cedar

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shadows, the thick bilious
laughter of ravens.

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You say walk in cold water,
let it burn your feet.

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When you dive into the
stream, you float for a while,

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then try to hold the
current in your pale hands.

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And I remember your fingers
like coals stoking my breasts.

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Your black hair waves like
tentacles or a negative halo

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radiant in its aquamarine pool.

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Like blind minnows,
your fingertips

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bump the smooth skulls
of stones under water.

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And for a moment, I
worry you'll drown,

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but you rise streaming a
chandelier of watery light.

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Even our dark sides love.

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Last night I dreamt of blood
and beatings of giving away

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a bright red slip.

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I tied my mother
to a gypsy wagon."

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Not a nice thing to do,
girls, don't do that.

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"I tied my mother
to a gypsy wagon

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and drove it west while
her arms like kites

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waved at passing weeds.

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She blessed over and over.

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She asked if the eye is
as blue as beach glass.

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Will it see itself leap to
the bottom of the stream?

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I watch a water ouzel now
whose name you won't believe.

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It dips in and out
of sizzling foam,

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its thin yellow
legs canny on moss

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covered stones I'd slip on.

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I watch it disappear
beneath white water,

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consuming itself
above the bird who

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emerges sky gray triumphant
on the opposite shore.

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Ordeal by ice, twice, twice
I change my heart to ice

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suspend it twice in
air to sprout wings

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for the winds care then cage
it in the bones of flame

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to unlock the twins
from separate names.

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Even as a young girl, I'd
sit beside a dry creek

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I'd wish was full and sketched
the Tanager shading black wings

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on its heart red sides.

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Sitting alone under
the vast loneliness

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of trees and that
small woods, I heard

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voices huge with
wind and the coming

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dusk that wouldn't let me go.

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Who could I tell but the dead?

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What name could I give passion?

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I watched the way animals
surprised the grass,

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then I pretended I was a
lion no one could kill.

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Summer's demise,
Gemini rises just

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before midnight in
the southern sky.

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Castor and Pollux from
icy toe to icy toe,

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I trace with the
twins eye for balance.

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Even the dead must
have this simple joy.

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After all these years,
what we come to,

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wet branches beating
our chests as we

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wade to the other
side of the creek.

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Reaching for the
slippery knuckles

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of roots clinging
to clay banks, we

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fall into water we
can see through.

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Cedar perfumes our numb fingers
that finally hold musky bark.

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How deliciously we shiver?

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This is the journey the heart
makes back through water

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under stars filled with the
certainty of submarine light.

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We count the times
we've drowned to live.

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When I climb ashore,
you splash water

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straight into the
air at my feet.

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This time I can love
and shove away the dead.

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You splash again.

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It is that simple.

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I wait for the ouzel to
come back downstream, wait

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for its small piping,
your splashing already

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deep inside me."

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