For Anna Mae Pictou Aquash

Beneath a sky blurred with mist and wind, I am amazed as I watch the violet Heads of crocuses erupt from the stiff earth After dying for a season, As I have watched my own dark head Appear each morning after entering The next world to come back to this one, Amazed. It is the way in the natural world to understand the place The ghost dancers named After the heart breaking destruction. Anna Mae, Everything and nothing changes. You are the shimmering young woman Who found her voice, When you were warned to be silent, or have your body cut away From you like an elegant weed. You are the one whose spirit is present in the dappled stars. (They prance and lope like colored horses who stay with us Through the streets of these steely cities. And I have seen them Nuzzling the frozen bodies of tattered drunks On the corner.) This morning when the last star is dimming And the busses grind toward The middle of the city, I know it is ten years since they buried you The second time in Lakota, a language that could Free you. I heard about it in Oklahoma, or New Mexico, How the wind howled and pulled everything down In righteous anger. (It was the women who told me) and we understood wordlessly The ripe meaning of your murder. As I understand ten years later after the slow changing Of the seasons That we have just begun to touch The dazzling whirlwind of our anger, We have just begun to perceive the amazed world the ghost dancers Entered Crazily, beautifully.