NATIVE AMERICAN WOMAN SPEAK

NATIVE AMERICAN WOMAN SPEAKS:

     —for Gene Ruggles

Sitting

like Buddha, Mary

TallMountain was the guardian,

a black triangle on a vast white plain.

Both solid, and non-solid, her hair, a living bridge

uniting head to shoulder, composed entirely of triangles.

The mantra interspliced dream images of her name. She said life

is a mountain.   Sit tall, become the mountain.  You are always going

to climb your own highest summit. She demonstrated, by sitting

cross-legged, the importance of strong foundations.

Standing, she could've been taller,

but that wasn't the

lesson.

2/25/92
SF National Poetry Week
1994 Waiting to Move the Mountain, CPITS 30th anthology
          whatbook & whatverb e-zine, www.levity.com/interbeing/fall.html

I adored Mary, and scribbled this down after a reading, it was from a dream image—she asked for this poem in the shape of a diamond mountain. Years later, I found it posted on the internet, which eventually led to creating this blog... Mary made me do it. Embrace the web. I resisted for a very long time. Sadly, the link is dead, I don't even remember the name of the online poetry rag. Maybe Bill Vartnaw (Taurean Horn), GP Scrap, or QR Hand's mag. I just remember the colors on the lage. It was amazing to see our poems on the internet.