i.
the stars on the highway
litter the end of the world
with their shine, a stop
along the haze that blurs
vision and ceremony.
songs are spoken
aloud in the hopes that the chant
will take up the cause
on the road to heaven.
how can we recount
songs sung for others
when grief gets in our way?
is it a memory – fleeting, tenuous
like the map of stars
floating between us as we gaze
skyward
wishing the road between worlds
would clear?
ii.
blue is the color of the moment,
fine, tempered
with just a touch of sky
and of sorrow,
not a sadness that while
fleeting
takes possession of the soul
at midnight,
but a deep,
clear, resonant grief
sung into place
long before
we dreamt it,
swallowed and reborn
to become another sky.
iii.
of the world
occurs in the blink
of an eye, a breath
on a day full of sunlight
like so many other.
layer upon layer of spinning dust
ash
and ice sparkling.
hidden in the blue horse
which heralds the dawn.
like that thunderclap
hoof silent, unseen,
but known so well
as to become
like breath and
beauty,
it can swallow one whole
in that quiet moment
between dusk
and dawn,
taking up residence
in the hinterlands
of the hidden universe,
covered in blue
and desperate
to be freed.
About the Author:Carolyn Dunn is an American Indian writer and academic whose poetry, short fiction, and nonfiction have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. Her poetry has been collected in Outfoxing Coyote and Hidden Creek Journal; she is the editor of two anthologies: Hohzo — Walking in Beauty (with Paula Gunn Allen) and Through the Eye of the Deer (with Carol Comfort); and she is the author of a children's book, Coyote Speaks (with Ari Berk). Currently, she is a James Irvine Foundation Fellow at the Center for American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California, where she is pursuing a doctorate. Dunn is also a member of the all–women Native drum group The Mankillers.
Copyright © 2007 by Carolyn Dunn. The poem may not be reproduced in any form without the author's express written permission.