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GHOST DANCE
High up in the Black Hills
Two Ponyboys, Lakotabred,
Are breaking camp in the early
Morning fog. Their legs are still
Sleepy, still chilled. Their hands
Do not grow any lighter
With the dawn. They are busy banking
Their fire out cold. Clinching
Their grips. Steadying their heavy
Horses' heads. Preparing their childjourney
For all the days of their lives
While lost ghosts prowl nightly across
The faitgrey shelves of stones
And down through green lairs
And out over the artless, wretched desert
Alone with the SpiritGod of the dumb.
STANDING AMONG TREES
Standing among trees
and the white lace falling
the ash a fine silt flute
and so much singing in the leaves
the legs of limbs spread astride
and so much singing within this shade
how the night comes on
a lyric over the land
in the midst of fierceness
the spiked reed, bruised blueflax
all manner of manwoman well
whether bent or upright
(Blest this firstearth sleep!)
and faroff greenwalking wind
upon herb and godgrass
and faroff greenwaking wind
upon the face of mist
and unto all things balm
(Stars be seed!)
blown from the tongue of heaven
GhostWalk
They have begun their ghostwalk, over ghostsnow,
breathing between the spaces of long, reedy trees,
black aspen, pitchlike, skins flayed blonde,
cowled gowns sweeping the cold, veinedwhite earth,
through eyelit blue dawn where adobe abbey ends, mesa begins,
up into the heartdark wood behind the fir- and the firelines, taut and austere oxbow,
only ash, incense scent here, this path, filed and peeled by their bare feet,
los abuelos, and alone, shaman from some dreamt memory ago,
barely breathing, climbing back up coarse, ropesoled ladders across grainy Puye cliffs,
each morning, where anasazi live, into space, and white absence, the long tao of dawn.