Julie G’s Reviews > The Death of Sitting Bear: New and Selected Poems > Status Update

Too often has it been too late.
I risk my soul and contemplate

The instant that is lately dead.
I reckon what I might have said

Had I been quicker in my brain
And given words to weave again.

But you are gone, and I am left
To find my tongue at last, bereft.

On these dark steps my wit is keen.
Imagine what I meant to mean.

the house wastes away
there was life and laughter here
who shall remember

The moon dissolves in bands of smoke
And there is havoc in the trees.
The old storm spirit is about.

We speak brave words to stay its ire.
"Oh Man-ka-ih, pass over me!
We are a people of the sun!"

It is different now
But in my early childhood
The mouth of Canyon de Chelly--
An oasis there of many colors
And the sounds of dine bizaad
And the sizzle of fry bread--
Must have been among
The four or five best places on earth

At dawn
Beyond the buttes
And through fringes of rain,
The sun appears, low in brilliance,
Ranging from the beginning to the end
Of time. There is only prayer to be said.

If you could have one day back, the one that you
have kept a secret in your soul, what day would it be?

The sacred here emerges and abides.
The day burns down, the hours dissolve in time;
The bears parade the deeper continent
As silences pervade the firmament,
And wind wavers on the radiant rime.
Here is the house where wilderness resides.

She spoke a language known only to God.
God gave a nod. Nothing to God is odd.

There is a stillness on this perfect world,
And I am content to settle in its hold.
I turn inward on a wall of books.
They are old friends, even those that
Have dislodged my dreams. One by one
They have shaped the thing I am.

Mortality
Is your shadow and your shade.
Translate yourself to spirit;
Be present on your journey.
Keep to the trees and waters.
Be the singing of the soil.