The prowl of cop cars disturbs our slumber

The howl of horns in the freezing city

where your hands and feet move in time to the 
beating drum. 

Blessed be the sage smoke
curled in cement air. 

And out on the land

Red dresses hang from trees
The groan of the earth bearing the weight
of pipe on its back, broke open
like a shell. Taste the rancid

heart.

Don’t you chase us with ancestors
and their old speech, don’t you dance and turn and
pin us up against a wall. 

When from such dreams we still try to retreat.

Like the animals deeper
into disappearing forest. 

Like icebergs calving into shrinking 
islands, like a breath exhaled

into a dark and crowded sky.