Louise Erdrich: Original Fire: Selected and New Poems

The seeds of thistles

push from nowhere, forming a rose of spikes

that spreads all summer until it

stands in a glory of

needles, blossoms, blazing

purple clubs and fists.

One sister wore the eyes of an old man

around her neck.

Scratched porcelain

washed down

with the hot lye of his breath.

One sister rode love

like a ship in light wind.

The sails of her body

unfurled at a touch.

No man could deny her

safe passage, safe harbor.

The youngest was shut like a bell.

The white thorns of silence

pricked in each bush

where she walked,

and the grass stopped growing where she stood.

One year the three sisters came out of their rooms,

swaying like the hot roses

that papered their walls.

They walked, full grown, into the heart of our town.

Young men broke their eyes

against their eyes of stone,

and singed their shy tongues

on the stunned flames of their mouths.

It was in late August in the long year of drought.

The pool halls were winnowed

and three men drew lots

to marry the sisters, all six in a great house.

On the night of the wedding

the wind rose on a glass stem.

The trees bowed. The clouds knocked.

We tethered our dogs.

Some swore they saw a hoop

of lightning dance down in their yard.

We felt the weight toward dawn

of lead sinkers in our bones,

walked out, and caught the first, fast drops on our tongues.

My breasts are soft.

My hair is dull.

I am growing into the body

of the old woman who will bear me

toward my death,

my death which will do me no harm.

Every day the calico cat returns from the fields

with a mouse in her jaws.

After every bite of the tender lawn, the ground squirrel

jerks and flinches,

but no hawk drops out of the sky.

The fat creature continues to eat, nervously

stuffing itself with pleasure.

I watch him as I drink from a bottle of grassy wine.

Why do I long

to be devoured and to forget

in life rather than in death?

What is the difference?

I’m much the worse for wear, it’s double true.

Too many incidents

a man might misconstrue—

my conduct, for a lack of innocence.

I seem to get them crazed or lacking sense

in the first place.

Ancient, solid gents

I sit by on the bus because they’re safe,

get me coming, going, with their canes,

or what is worse,

the spreading stains

across the seat. I recognize at once

just what they’re up to, rustling in their coats.

There was a priest,

the calmer sort,

his cassock flowing down from neck to feet.

We got to talking, and I brushed his knee

by accident,

and dutifully,

he took my hand and put it back

not quite where it belonged; his judgment

was not that exact.

I underwent

a kind of odd conversion from his act.

They do call minds like mine one-track.

One track is all you need

to understand

their loneliness, then bite the hand that feeds

upon you, in a terrible blind grief.

Wind has stripped

the young plum trees

to a thin howl.

They are planted in squares

to keep the loose dirt from wandering.

Everything around me is crying to be gone.

The fields, the crops humming to be cut and done with.

Walking in the breakdown lane, margin of gravel,

between the cut swaths and the road to Fargo,

I want to stop, to lie down

in standing wheat or standing water.

Behind me thunder mounts as trucks of cattle

roar over, faces pressed to slats for air.

They go on, they go on without me.

They pound, pound and bawl,

until the road closes over them farther on.

So he kept on. As he walked, the road, which had been nicely paved and lit when it got near heaven, narrowed and dipped. Soon it was only gravel, then dirt, then mud, then just a path beaten in the grass. The land around it got poor too, dry and rocky. And when Potchikoo got to the entrance of the Indian heaven, it was no gate of pearl, just a simple pasture gate of weathered wood. There was no one standing there to guard it, either, so he went right in.

On the other side of the gate there were no tracks, so Potchikoo walked aimlessly. All along the way, there were chokecherry bushes, not quite ripe. But Potchikoo was so hungry again that he raked them off the stems by the handful and gobbled them down, not even spitting out the pits.

The dreadful stomachaches he got, very soon, were worse than hunger, and every few steps poor Potchikoo had to relieve himself. On and on he went, day after day, eating berries to keep his strength up and staggering from the pain and shitting until he felt so weak and famished that he had to sit down. Some time went by, and then people came to sit around him. They got to talking. Someone built a fire, and soon they were roasting venison.

The taste of it made Potchikoo lonesome. Josette always fried her meat with onions.

“Well,” he said, standing up when he was full, “it’s time to go now.”

The people didn’t say good-bye though — they just laughed. There were no markers in this land, nothing but extreme and gentle emptiness. It was made to be confusing. There were no landmarks, no lookouts. The wind was strong, and the bushes grew quickly, so that every path made was instantly obscured.

But not Potchikoo’s path. At regular intervals new chokecherry bushes had sprung up from the seeds that had passed through his body. So he had no trouble finding his way to the gate, out through it, and back on the road.

The sky glows yellow over the tin hump

of Mount Anaeus, and below on the valley floor

the fog cracks and lifts.

Beyond it the throat of the river flares.

The river shakes its body

of terminal mirrors.

I saw you walk down the mountain yesterday.

You were wearing your stained blue jacket,

your cheap, green boots.

You disappeared into a tree

the way you always did, in grief.

I went looking for you.

In the orchard floored with delicate grass,

I lay down with the deer.

A sweet, smoky dust rose

from the dead silver of firs.

When I stand in the circle of their calm black arms

I talk to you. I tell you everything.

And you do not weep.

You accept

how it was

night came down.

Ice formed on your eyelids.

How the singing began, that was not music

but the cold heat of stars.

Wind runs itself beneath the dust like a hand

lifting a scarf.

Mother, you say, and I hold you.

I tell you I was wrong, I am sorry.

So we listen to the coyotes.

And their weeping is not of this earth

where it is called sorrow, but of another earth

where it is known as joy,

and I am able

to walk into the tree of forgiveness with you

and disappear there

and know myself.