Old Indian Hand Against A Blue Sky

You rise like a tortoise

with years of clay on your back, rise

above the dull buzz of insects and desert dust

with the broken canyons of your veins showing,

the bits of snowy sand

clinging to your skin like stars.

The bone of your index finger was broken
a thousand rivers ago
on some white man's stone.

Now that bent finger

is forever pointing west.

You reach up like ruffled crow feathers,

like a juniper's dream.

And every knuckle opens its wrinkled mouth

and begins to sing.

Old Indian hand, you rise up

like five-winged fire

trying to touch the sky's blue shell

and paint it red.

URL: http://leo.stcloud.msus.edu/kaleidoscope/oldhand.html