In this dawning new year, poet Lois Red Elk once again brings valuable perspective to the little things of daily life that matter most. Below, she offers Mountain Journal readers the opportunity to expand their indigenous vocabulary in 2018. First, in her piece "A Well Worked Design", she calls attention to the inexplicability and interrelatedness of nature's design as expressed through the forces of daku-shkah-shkah. Secondly, she reminds adults that by our actions and examples we set to take heed of one of the most previous gifts known to humankind. In Red Elk's native Lakota/Dakota, the word is wakanyeja though ever culture understands its sacredness.With "Spirits of Our Own", she reminds us that even as time goes on, the loved ones we hold dear and who depart physically are never far away. —MoJo editors
By Lois Red Elk
We have been in a deep freeze here on the northern plains with extreme low temps. But we are surviving.During these moons of cold, reflections without the sun, and season of celebrations andstory telling, I always share stories of Spirit.
A Well
Worked Design
Imagine a design so perfectly ordered
like a spider’s web or a leaf,
breath of gods, dust borrowed from an ancient
planet, a salamander kind of
anatomy, crawling, then running for a life on this
terra firma, lungs modeled after
sea creatures from the past then fine tuned for
air, a tawachi born for this space,
for those beginning dreams, but with potential
to create, develop. We
look at
markings, a sketch, prints in petrified rock, in mud,
on plateaus where settlement is
foreseen as safe for female members. They smile
believe this arrival is all predicted,
the cloak of clouds, the liquid of space between
nurturer, fire, the soft flexing power
of what makes all things move, subscribe to a
habitation – daku shkah shkah.
With pursuit, they raise their thighs for the rhythm
created where bones and shells mingle
sending a strong
layered telling from deep in the
throat of lyrics and journeys.
They share the coming and going among all who
listen, they raise their arms and
palms to the wonder of a giant zitkala flashing bolts
