Poetry on Wings

Photo taken in Porcatello, Idaho September 2012

This poem was inspired by my Lakota language and history classes.

Rainwater Sky

The rainwater sky
Finds Grandmother
Weaving clouds
Of white thunder.

As her needle
Of bone
Draws the remembering,
A tear slips down
The ridge of her cheek.
Another has found
A faded bead
On her deerskin gown.

Grandmother sees
Beyond the storm
A vision of lights,
The lights of
Native Spirits
Haunting satellites.
She has lived to see
Red words turn white.

Grandmother leans
Against the wind
As it whispers
“It is too late
To repair the fabric
Of death,
Of trust misplaced.”

A tourist dollar
Falls from her hand
Like a leaf off
A dying tree.
A green bandage
Too small to cover
The pain she feels.

Still she prays,
Asking why the world
Does not see
That all bones are white
And the same
After death becomes
A memory…