The fire smoke here on the prairie has been bad and harmful for a long stretch of summer into autumn. I had to take a break and did some traveling. It was good to see other people and a different landscape. I was lecturing, visiting, counseling, more visiting and then went to ceremony. And I wrote 10 poems—poems of a different message.
I am sharing one of them with you this month.
Take care,
Lois
"The Trickster," a painting by Randal M. Dutra. To see more of his work go to randaldutra.com
Coyote Invisible
by Lois Red Elk
Coyotes
prowl the low ground, to understand
the
process of potential maneuvers, or how long
it
takes to become a tale. He figures he
has come
to
some sense of understanding of how one
set
of nerves at a time senses another, a different
kind
of shift, how emotions might carry over,
how
to allow self-protection to become slowly
unraveled,
exposed. It wasn’t the muscle or skin,
or
the worn out tissue. It was bone, the
type located
in
center of structure—where it all begins.
It was
there
where each joint rotates, opens and can’t
retract. That place is the connection to how it
begins
and where it all will end. It is where
the
unseen
raw nerves sit, under each layer of defense,
where
the scraggily dog, the trickster laughs with
all
faces of the moon. He plans and waits patiently
for
the appropriate time to steal parts of the skeletal,
frame,
to haul off some of the choice, small pieces
of
private, personal being. You never
expect to
lose
any of what you are made of, not to an old dog,
or
whatever name he calls himself this time around.
Did
you say this time? Has this happened before?
Did
you not learn what the last hunger did to your
privacy,
your skin, the way your cavities were pried
open,
how your frame, eye sockets, cranial emotions
POSTNOTE: We are pleased that Lois is working away on a new collection of poems and will let you know when it is published. In the meantime, ask for her other volumes at your favorite local bookseller: Our Blood Remembers, winner of the best non-fiction award from Woodcraft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers; Dragonfly Weather; and Why I Return to Makoce with a foreword from Montana's recent state poet laureate Lowell Jaeger and nominated for a High Plains Book Award in poetry. Given headlines that continue to appear about the discoveries of new atrocities committed at boarding schools for indigenous children, we encourage you to read Lois' contribution to MoJo that appeared in June, The Unspeakable Past Of Indian Boarding Schools
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About Lois Red Elk-Reed
Lois Red Elk-Reed is a poet who calls the high plains home. She is Mountain Journal's poet in residence.
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