“Up on Deer Ridge Today”

Somehow

it was on this day

that it all came together —

at the river’s edge,

in the land of the Principal People,

an alignment of stars and tributaries.

No harps or angels,

no funeral pyres

or charnel ground attendants;

only seed-carrying wind

churning currents below

hawk circling above.

Crossing into new terrain,

this body ‘done’ with scarring,

this soul scoured of all longing,

sleights and loss and injury

left on the forest floor —

an offering of white bones

to the spirit of place.

While lovers celebrate union,

love of a different sort swept in on me today.

Affection of soft earth receiving a footfall softly.

Riversong with her abiding reminders.

A Wayfarer, nestled within the periphery,

seeing with sunlit-clarity

this placement within the great weave.

On the way back,

a herd of deer

— seven of them —

did not move

as I walked through their cluster.

They gazed at me with nonchalance

as if I was one of them;

as if I’d trotted up

for the feast of story and acorns.

Suddenly, a thought washed in:

“Why is it that white men

always name things

after other white men?”

This is how I returned

to the Ancient Way of Naming

so I could fall in love again

with the land that holds me.

© 2023 / The Poet’s Dreamingbody / Frank Inzan Owen (Hidden Mountain)

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“Connective” from Neurogenesis / Robert Rich