Tribes

Warpaint palms downturned to drop ash and
some bloody trickle to the
Earth in some form of a
prayer to
Her to
say a thank-you and a
we'll always love you and then
dance and dance and always the night
dance and
I held an elk bone and it
contained the
sum total of
my people's history in cal-
cium and marrow and
also a wood be-
cause we all have
wooden bones around here and
hush because we wouldn't want
the
wolves to know that or

* * *

Soon after the baby boy was
conceived beside some
ageless river