Kateri Tekakwitha

Kateri Tekakwitha was born
with her name, and born again
as Catherine of Sienna, dark-eyed
saint of the world across the sea.
Father Claude said she was
the truest convert in Kanawake:
eyes burned with a passionate purity,
hands meek as any French lady.
She died as beautifully as the pale,
naked martyrs in Baroque paintings.
So Claude wrote.

Tekakwitha was born quietly,
so quietly that her mother, laboring
through the night to bring her
into the world, thought she was dead.
Slapped her, woke the girl just
as dawn came. Tekakwitha was one
of the first to learn French, but
moved as quietly through life
as the day she was born--watching,
listening. She chose the name
"Kateri," which came more naturally
to her Mohawk tongue than Catherine.
Symbols were easier to pronounce:
missionaries likened her to a lily.
Why? For her sun-browned skin and
smallpox scars? She was thin, to be sure,
and graceful. Lived her last years
between church and chamber, scarcely
speaking to those she passed. They said
afterwards that her skin
glowed like a holy one. And when
her eyes burned with fever,
she cried out for Christ,
not her mother. As if she had
already passed on to the other world.
Two days after Kateri died,
cousin Anastasia saw her standing
in the doorway, hand raised
as if waving good-bye. “Kateri!”
she cried, but Catherine faded into
the blue evening light. When Father
Claude heard, he said he’d always known
she was a saint. Never mind that Mohawk
ghosts always linger around the home
for a few days before drifting up
into the Milky Way. When she appeared
to Claude, it was at sunrise, she held
a cross, and lilies lay at her feet.
Behind her head an an embossed disk
hovered like a gold plate. It marked her
worth remembering in story,
song, and painting.

Many of us have two names. One comes
out of the womb with us; we choose
another when we've been around
long enough for the world
to touch us. Everything living
has a name: Maple trees are called Acer;
Birch, Betula. Ash are Fraxinus
and Willow, Salix. Catalpas are
the only ones that go by the name
they grew out of the ground knowing--
they're too outlandish to change,
with their leaves big as elephant
ears, foot-long pods dropping all
through August, and showy flowers.

We are all born with a name. We change it
when something sweeps through us like a
great wind--or marks us, making us
different than we were before. In old times,
maybe killing a buffalo; today, marrying
a kind man, or being adopted by new parents,
new country, new chance at life.

A wind swept through her when she
was young, and she embraced it in
her long limbs. Perhaps I am no one
to ask. But did Tekakwitha fade
to make room for the saint?

All I know is that there are
no catalpa tree converts.

Wisteria

Wisteria winds round chandeliers,
lavender swags swoon over balustrades.
Vines cling to the woodwork,
reaching out to tickle wallflowers
under the ear with their tendrils.

Hyacinths bloom through the floor tiles,
penetrating cracks in the marble—
Red trumpet flowers swathe columns
in a many-armed embrace. Climbing vines
do an about-face, snake from dim interior
to full sun—runners pull acrobatic stunts
on the creaking veranda, where once
young belles stood, talking to suitors
over tea, both wondering when
polite words would subside
to silent introductions.

Honeysuckles at the breast
of the ruined rose arbor now
running rampant across the lawn.
This house has become wanton,
yielding to gravity, falling
downhill towards pleasure.

Years ago the wrought iron gates
gave in, green vines tumbling
them backwards into the grass.
Around tiled paths lie fragments
of fine china, a silver bracelet belonging
to that belle—chain links sinking
in loam, rose-print dishes resting
in many pieces, pressed in the earth,
the sweeter for being spread
everywhere across this field.

The garden gate moans on its hinges.
Opening, you have to actually tear away
the honeysuckle stems to pass through.
A sign that these two had best be left alone.

Blue Pine

I almost ran into Jen walking past
The house. “Wake up!” she said.
And I realized how much time
I spend in a dream world, in clouds
of preoccupations like mosquitoes.

In Spanish, “preocupado” means worried
because that’s what worries are: things
we haven’t yet admitted to ourselves
are worthless static blips in precious
brainspace that should be used for
love and understanding.

“Preocupado” is why I take my
reading out to the dock and end up
just lying there and listening:
to cicadas talking across the inlet,
to the guy who works at the
boathouse kicking a soccer ball
against the wall, to the far-off
leafblower drone.

When I open my eyes,
everything is more saturated
in blue than usual—a trick
of bright sun—especially
the pine tree above the
white canoes. The sky behind
it seems to have seeped into
its needles. A sentinel,
it stands to mark the movement
of everything else—clouds
passing behind it, soft-edged
mosaics—huge dragonflies
swooping dizzily towards home.

Every time I lie on the dock it is for
this same dream of nothing
but standing content and planted,
this something-wordless
soaking into my skin.

Tinselshimmering

[I wish the formatting had been preserved on this one...I had it laid out on the page in a more interesting way...but too lazy to redo it all here]

Tinselshimmering on the edges
of my vision
from twelve miles downhill
not enough food
cold radiating from mountains
forty pounds cutting down
into my collarbones.

Almost-fasting on a spirit journey—
thirty days in the wilderness
just roots and berries
and red leaves blooming
among the green like flowers.

Late cicadas skitter their
rattlesnake warning
frost is coming
life is dying
as it does every year—

Each year
it is a tragedy,
each year
everything fills itself brimful
with living and goes out
with a flare

And I don’t go or stay
I just walk, walk, walk on
following where my feet lead
down untrammeled meadows
up these deep grooved routes through
cottongrass
timothy
and fescue
arnica aster and blue
gentian pressed against
curves of crumbling stone
away from windchill
that strips warm moisture
from my breath, leaves me
parched and speechless

I gulp down the cool taste of nothing
wipe it on my face
it permeates my pores
trickles down my veins
like rain down roots of trees

The empty-belly feeling is only starting
it can be pushed away
like sounds into the distance
in a crowded place
when you fall into a poem

And standing empty
and sweating
onto summit-rocks
I think I might
melt into them
leave behind
all these swishing-sounding
layers of nylon
become transparent
a shimmer of existence
against granite
hardly a disturbance
in the fabric
of the landscape
for the rest
of my life

That would be wonderful

North of Yellowstone

If I had my way I’d just swing
from one trapeze to another all the time.
Maybe that’s why I’m fighting

the gray doves of the daily grind—
their little claws catching on my sweater—
and living on memories sometimes.

When I move slowly they nest in my hair.
I think I was running all summer long—
They were content to settle in the cedars.

In scree fields two miles high we sang a song
by the Fleet Foxes—only remembered the first two
verses, drove Ari mad. Got lost before the pass—on the long

dark downhill the day’s heat seeped through
our pores like an ebbing tide. We tried to hold on to this
wild, vital life but each day bled into

evening. Two weeks fell away with the soft passing of the sun in
its’ arc from gold to blue. In all our talks about Buddhism I never
learned how to let go. At home in the Tidewater, grasping, gasping

for mountain air, the birds returned. Roosevelt called it “gray twilight”
but sadness isn’t a static place.
It’s a slowly throbbing flock that comes home for the winter.

I should forge a more lasting season inside. A space
away from storms where birds won’t rush the doors.
When I run or sing harmonies they settle on the lake

and trees, their small wail lapping against the shore.
In my dreams I sing and play guitar all the time.
In real life I only practiced when there

was a guy to impress. Harmonies bounce around in my mind—
they want to get out, turn into fleet-footed songs
running through the snow, wreathing me in rhymes.

Absaroka

I wrote this one one evening in a tent pitched at an old elk hunting camp when I was supposed to be writing my final paper about wolf predation on elk and bison. Oops. It got done in the end though


Beyond these spiky spruce trees
there is nothing: the earth falls off there,
like in “The Neverending Story”
when places kept turning up as air.
There is nothing but this porous here
we inhabit: these sticky geraniums,
this swamp grass brushing the bottoms
of my palms, this wind whistling
through its teeth, the dead tree spires
on the hillside that have stood
these twenty years since the fires.
This lake, with a girl padding
across a spiky log bridge.
These wild strawberries,
runners spreading red across
dusty hillside, sweet gems nestled
in moist pockets at the base of trees.

We comb our fingers through the leaves
to find berries beneath. Wind combs
our sitting figures on the hillside, reminds
us of our inner bear. Barely beneath
the surface lurks this creature:
walking on logs, carefully placing soft paws;
snatching life from mountain streams
and carrying it away in its jaws;
combing hillsides for the reward
cubs (of all ages and species) like.

Wind washes through my porous bones,
my porous flesh, my window-self.
Flung open. Myself removed of self.
Consciousness falls like a husk
to the gentle hands of the wind:
like clothes falling to the floor,
like the awestruck thought
before all thought is erased:
could anything, possibly, be better?