11.26
A Day of Mourning
I want to sit down and grieve
Sit in the snow
Feel the cold settling of
Futures cut off
Back, front, inside, below
The cat cowers beneath
A threat he feels, we cannot see
Less confident, less relaxed
He found out about the world
Yet we call him crazy?
We actually once joked,
About the cat
Another white male in
This house
Man spreading, balls out
What if - we welcome the
Cold breath of the trauma
Like we revel in close-warm ignorance?
Pendulate, harmonize
Sweat, shiver, move, expose
Don’t look away,
witness frame to frame
What some bodies already know
Know like - what we’re made of
Not like: they can hold
In the forest,
Brokenness makes a loud sound
Just the once: open tree to sky
Smashed branches spread lichen
On the earth
Where the Wea people grew
Corn, hunted bison and elk
Danced and sang in ceremony
A Black man lives each day
23 hours in solitary
He - crochets
The Chinook nation: Clatsop, Willapa, Wahkiahkum, Cathlamet
Sent a letter every day
While Obama’s lead pardon attorney
In protest, gave his job away
9000 un-communted sentences
245 un-recognized tribal nations
Children, ancestors, graves
Breathing souls with hopes,
Names
I want to lay the broken branches
Over my face today
Fill my mouth with rain
Here: I share the nourishment
Why not share the pain
Practice with Devon 