Poetry Steeped

in my Mvskoke culture all plants trees flowers creepy crawlies and all animals in the sky on the land under the water are teachers and cousins and friends

tumbleweed

detached entirely from your roots

you are free

so

roll on as you please

dry little puffball

agricultural cornucopia drifting with friend wind

you never seem lonely to me

merry and opportunistic

death is functionality

your structure shades the smallest songbird

lizard and spider shelter camouflaged

safe

from burning sun

you go piling up

on long abandoned dreams

fall apart

in a swell of water

one final gift before

you leave

seeding sage and amaranth flowers I will never see

your generous spirit

a peace sign to me

mountain bluebird

black eyes kind

breast exposed smoke and ash

poetry your

red orange throat

your turquoise notes bring flowers

sweet vigilant you cry

deliberate suppression

of fire

how will you survive

the noise from the machines

your call for love is thin and few

there is no reply

yet everyday you sing to me

joy and reverie

beneath

a weeping sky

lobo/ grey wolf

hunted feared

the green fire

saved the one who killed you

dying in your eyes

stay with me a little longer

howling in the pinon forest

beside the mother ditch

river she

still wants us here

black bear coyote little fox

am I a mountain lion

sister wolf

I pray for us

can you forgive their predicated fabricated

all their dirty lies

you never

decimated populations

never stole their children in the night

Apache kept our stories too

our brothers knew our names

before the others came to drive us to the brink

many trappers we outwitted

we escaped the teeth

in Cimarron in Gila

lobo! do not leave me now

what a wretched thing

trigger itch in paradise

La Lobo sits arroyo searching

stacking bones beside the light