My friend.
it will take me home too.
on the earth.
The sound is fading away.
It is a five sounds.
The sound is fading away.
bringing the rain.
Crow is my name.
9/1975
brought the breeze.
A bird I accompany.
a bee I accompany.
FAREWELL TO THE WARRIORS
Come,
it is time for you to depart.
We are going on a long journey.
10/2/1975
NIGHT SONG
In the dusk
I am floating
a bat
I accompany.
In the dark
I am afraid
an owl
I accompany
In the night
I am invisible
a spirit
I accompany.
Daybreak
I am a sparrow
dawn's light
I cleave with my wings.
10/1975
SEDNA
(whose fingers became seals, whales & otters)
In the sea
I am in otter, a seal
Sedna I accompany.
Across the fields in the dark,
fleeting I am dying,
the great wapiti a raven
I ride. I accompany.
In the hills
I ride a dark horse
the wind
I follow.
10/1975
Mary asked: How old are you? Talk about your old life. I wrote:
I have passed through many days and traveled the long way, the shadows have fallen all about me and I can see but dimly. But my mind is clear, and my memory has not failed me. I cannot count the years I have lived. All that I know about my age is that I was old enough to draw the bow and kill squirrels at the time of the second migration of the Creek, and the Cherokee people from the old country under the leadership of Chief Cooweescowee. I was born near Eufala, Alabama, on the Chattahoochee River, and then left there when I was about 15 years of age. The trip took about a year for the peaches were green when we left Alabama. And the wild onions were plentiful when we arrived. —From Trail of Tears
10/1975. (I don't know if this is my work or a paraphrase).
GUARDIAN SPIRIT SONG
(from the Nez Perce)
Ravening coyote comes,
red hands,
red mouth,
necklace of eyes.
10/1975
Kroeber Hall, Berkeley 1 PM. Not six feet away from me sits a bluejay, all puffed up, making soft chirping noises. Right below him, a towhee is pecking seeds and grain on the ground. Neither wants to fly. The palm trees are swaying, and great gusts of wind shake the bushes. A drop of rain upon my face. The towhee spreads and fans his tail feathers and the bluejay puffs his downy vest. They are waiting for the storm to pass. Two red squirrels seek shelter. The bluejay also rearranges his feathers. They know I am watching them but they are unwilling to leave their bush. The air is heavy, the barometer is dropping. The birds find it difficult to fly. Bluejay is nervous and he keeps making soft chirping sounds to himself. For once, the policeman of the woods is quiet. Someone walked right by him and he didn't even utter a sound.
First winter rain storm comes,
gray sky,
gray wind,
clouds made of mist,
raindrops made of tears.
Noisy bluejay sits huddled,
blue feathers puffed up
black beak silent calm
Quiet now, the storm approaches,
comes down in torrents.
The winds howl and whistle through the trees,
broken branches on the country lane
strewn with autumn leaves.
10/9/1975
Black bear,
you lied!
(in the death song of the Sioux, the bear is supposed to help in death.)
10/1975
A wolf,
I considered myself,
but the owls are singing
and the night I fear.
10/16/1975
You are walking around
trying to remember
what you promised us
but now you can't remember.
Oyez. Now I remember
there was light to fill the nightmare,
to protect you from the the dark.
But the moon was kidnapped
by the bog creatures.
And now I can't remember
what they did with the moon
when they stole it from the sky.
So I am walking around
trying to remember.
Protect from my uneasy feelings,
Life
help me to overcome my sorrow,
my death.
Fear, strength
help me to overcome my anxiety,
to vanquish the enemy, fear
Love, give me the strength
to overpower it
and returned to you safe again.
Death you are black
and you overlook no one.
I dreamt you had returned
to find me here alone
waiting for you.
10/16/1975
A red maple leaf I am
but the frosts came early
that chill in the air
slows my sap
and the winds rage and howl,
my stems weaken
my companions,
torn free from their maker.
I feel the windbag at me
and my grip weakened,
marks the deep dread
the full fury of winter ahead.
10/16/1975
Have you ever ridden
upon the wings
of morning?
10/1975
Sand, an eternity of waves
crashing, constantly on the shore
nibbling away continents.
A ceaseless hunger,
grain by grain.
10/1975
Mary asked how old are you, write an autobiography.
When I was young the days were incredibly long, weeks, I knew not of, nor the months. Not even the years. I remember sitting up on my grandfather's knee and blowing out matches for him. In my fourth year, he said he was going to heaven and I never saw him again. My grandmother and I moved to the country where I ran free.
I was sent to kindergarten but I didn't like it, so I dropped out of school at the age of 4 1/2. I thought the world was flat and I was afraid to wander too far from home. I remember feeling the summer heat up on my body and life is good. But then I had to go to school and I spent 12 years not learning much of anything. What I did outside of school was infinitely more interesting than school.
I used to hike the hills and spend hours riding horseback in quiet solitude. Been extremely shy I related more to nature—which did not condemn or reject the person. It took me many years to overcome that shyness and all those communal moments I shared with nature are infinite treasures which will never depart for me.
Now and then, when life becomes too stressful, getting away from it all and re-experiencing that solitude of peace, nature can bring, clears my head and once again I can cope with the world.
10/1975
Mary said our mimeographed chapbooks, due Dec 11, needed to include an introduction, preface, a creation myth, a legend, a special occasion, a love song, a death song, a dream song, a joy song, autobiography, miscellaneous visions, and a song of hope. My journal was filled with photo drawings which I redid for the book. Wish I had a copy.
GRANDMOTHER
Two days on the road, I knew she wouldn't be there at the door to greet us. I was not surprised to hear that on the day, that exact hour we left home, she had suffered a pain in her chest that evening and the pain shot down her arm. Her heart was weakened. Small and frail in the big white hospital bed, she waved to us through the observation window. I am not allowed to see her. Her grandson visits a few moments with her alone. The doctors say that she will be fine, and out the hospital in three weeks but we both fear that this is the last homage we will pay to her—for we fear her time is come.
It was a last homage to the grandmother. We both knew we had to visit the grandmother soon. The family said she was well and fine. Yet we felt the tug of premonition and up death to come. Her time on earth was trying to close. I draw a black stallion, with white wings, turning into a man.
10/1975
CHEROKEE WAR SONGS
The song of the butterfly
in the coming heat
of the day
Arrow song,
scarlet
is its head.
I stood there
on the banks of the stream.
Across the river they speak of me
as a being.
Some of the buffalo
Strike ye
our land
with your curved horns.
The song of the night owl
Morning has broken,
wait, not fearing the light of the sun,
dawn's light.
The history of the world is written in blood.
We are all from the same tribe of man.
11/1975
SONG OF THE HORSE
Lash out in the air
with flinty hooves,
hammer out sparks
of red in the dusk.
Do not fear the wolves
my brave young colt.
Fight him with your hooves
and he will flee.
11/1975
ETERNITY OF SAND
The waves are breaking constantly at your sure,
nibbling ceaselessly away at your continents,
grain by tiny grain, moving the sand.
11/1975
Have you ever ridden upon the wings of morning?
Have you ever felt the kiss from the first rays of the sun?
Or have you ever walked your lovely white feet
over the grass covered with morning dew?
Come with me and share the birth of morning.
11/1975
Oh peregrine falcon, swiftest of birds,
most beautiful in flight, your numbers have dwindled,
your old haunts have all but disappeared.
Poetry in flight. But Man has finally clicked your wings
like he has before to countless other species.
How will our future children know you
when you were gone?
11/1975
The grass game.
He ho, thigh bone.
Knuckle bone.
Hey no nana
Na na na no.
11/1975
I love you, my little one
with rosy cheeks
and long black hair.
Oh, little one I love you.
Return to me safe
so that I may hold you
in my arms once again.
11/1975
LULLABYE
It's 2:30 AM, I can't sleep.
Lullaby, lullaby send me a dream.
Lullaby disconnect my mind.
Lullaby it's 2:30 AM, I can't sleep.
Lullaby, lullaby me to sleep.
11/1975
HARVEST
Send me your dreams
and I'll reap you a song.
11/1975
My spirit dwells within me.
My spirit is the well,
black and white,
it wells up within me.
11/1975
MISS HOPI
Miss Hopi, Miss Indian America,
in Scottsdale Arizona. Horse shows
Lucille Mano, that's no way
to be judged of your worth
like an Arabian showhorse
by biased cowboys and judges
in dusty grandstands.
They're not the ones who care
who is really beautiful.
12/2/1975
These fragments date back to a time from before I was a writer. I only cleaned up the exceptionally awkward gleanings when grammar was at war in a collision course with itself. These poems are resurrected from my class notes, they are not the final poems typed up in a chapbook, of which I have no copy.
The poems were modeled after North American Native writers we were reading (so I don't know how much is copycat work), in a Native American creative writing class I took at Sonoma State, with Mary Taylor, who was Coast Miwok.
I think Mary was a Bodega Bay Smith of the
Captain Stephen Smith infamy—who at 57, married a 16-year old Peruvian, Manuela Torres in order to obtain the Rancho Bodega land grant, but Smith also had a Coast Miwok "wife," Tsupu.
Their son,
Bill Smith, had 12 children with Rosalie Charles after his first Miwok wife Walla Walla died. The Smith clan was a massive mob whom I would later be related to by marriage, when Bill Smith's son, Young Eagle Smith, married my Aunt Mary Azalie Howard Reilly (her dead husband Myles was my uncle) at St. Eugene's Church.
I remember talking to Mary, who must have been Young's sister, at the wedding reception in Santa Rosa. There was quite a local Pomo and Coast Miwok line up on the left side of the church. Not only were all of Bill Smith's surviving children and families in attendance, but also famous
Kashaya Pomo shamam-healer and basketmaker
Essie Parrish, and Lake County Long Valley Cache Creek Pomo and Patwin basketmaker,
Mabel McKay. That relationship ended when Young, an inveterate gambler, gambled away the title to Mary Azalie's home in Santa Rosa.
I first met Essie and Mabel (through MaryTaylor) during the
Dry Creek dam protest demonstrations, where we moved hundreds of rare sedge plants from an ancestral Pomo village site to safety as the massive bulldozers constructed the Warm Springs dam for what was to become
Lake Sonoma.
The construction of this lake destroyed 122 areas associated with the history of human use. This included ten house-pits, five hunting blinds, two chert quarries, and eleven locations with petroglyphs. In addition, there were eight known gathering spaces where, for more than a hundred years, special plants were collected by Pomo people for traditional use.[4] Some Pomo people resisted the creation of the lake, assisting Archaeologists at Sonoma State University in writing about the prehistory and history of Warm Springs Dam, Lake Sonoma, and the Dry Creek Valley. —Wiki
Mary and her ex-husband Tom Taylor bought the derelict
Potter Schoolhouse in Bodega in 1966 for $10,500. Alfred Hitchcock rented it for
The Birds in 1961. The place sat empty until 1966 when Mary and Tom rescued the
haunted schoolhouse from demolition, after extensive renovation, they moved in and turned one classroom into the Bodega Bay Art Gallery (
Rancho Bodega Historical Society.)
I must've visited Mary there. We were invited to a Bodega Bay watercolor exhibit at the gallery on 12/5. I remember that the dive Casino Bar & Grill next door had the best burgers in West County.
I had to turn in a manuscript for our final project—which I never got back. I have notes for the chapbook to include a preface and introduction addressing cultural and environmental themes and historic background. Write an intro to your creation myth for Thursday. Write poems a theater, as marriage, of love, TVs, of death. Don't look back. Poetry is prayer, she said.
I probably recycled some of the writing in David Bromige's poetry workshop in 1978. These little fragments are all that survive. And of course, this patchwork memory. —MH 12/14/2023
