Two Spirit

The dogwood,
arched in skeletal pirouette,
accompanies the wind in mourning;
her rebirth, dormant
beneath lupine and buffalo grass,
buzzes with prayers
of locusts. This life reaches
a hand toward sky, aged grey
at the center of the world,
beckons evisceration,
for crows to pluck a temple from her body,
to carry lightening from the soft terrors
of this heat.

Blessed Crack!, her body breaks open,
severing reach of hands, carrier of rain,
deposit of star shadow
falling
tendril of light

her spirit quavers in the darkness,
questioning the path of its release. Scar,
singed on the underbelly,
turns inward, erupts: a blessing,
wet orange, incinerating sweet grass,
honeysuckle, sage. Their funeral perfumes,
attempting to huddle
the ground with smoke,
to protect the spirit
with memory, she hisses away
like beetle flesh

leans into
rain, pummeling
the membrane, opening
the wound, rushing
deeper,
deeper,
seeking heart, dark sinkhole
of spirit, welling
in cinders
until they are flooded
with cold

deeper
soul’s dark night,
dangling
thread
of shattered
universe,
made finally whole.

Mist rises and yawns
over the horizon, stretches
her arms, purple and gold,
brushing traces of shadow
deferred. Elk low
on the hillside, dropping their heads
to suck spiny sweetness
of prairie grass, nuzzling
warm, wet earth
with steaming
breath. A pair of wrens
dodge each other in the cool, morning
breeze, flitting in a playful melody
of wings. Their bodies dive
into fissures of space, tangle,
release to dive again.

Below their blue-black shimmer
circling into cloud, a green stem protrudes
from the vessel
of a splintered tree. Transformed,
this life seems foreign,
rootless,
trespass
as it too reaches
toward
steady
advance
of light.

But Still,

at the center of the world:
the dogwood.