Littlebird

Here Littlebird
We
Littlebird Godman
Sun Tree Life
Rose out of Sigh of Planet
Our head love
Touched
Rain to corn leaf
and moved mountains
Your name is
Written across maps
Navajo Hopi Santo Domingo
Scars on Our face
Cherokee Sioux
Camper trucked
Ice cream coned children
laugh at your house your hair
grow the scars up black, and
their shadow lights Our lies
Great Christian Forefathers
Built up a Nation
You have not, now
Want not
You showed your head of love

But
No Guns
No Ships
Houses
Papers

So we willed you stole you off to
Left over places
Littlebird you
Gave to me your
Hand Love
Told a canyon place
river liquid chocolate
sky “here”
(hand on your head)
Flash and roar and
water wash and
Afraid until
Swallows and Lizards
Knowing you were they
were
Wall and
Balanced rock
Your eyelash love smile Free
Makes
Campertrucked
Ice cream coned children
Laugh hollow
Mock and arrow point to
Where we are
And someday parents
stare ahead
as if you aren’t there
Wanting to be told
How to feel

II

Listening in mountains took three of us
hitchhiking
with cowboy hats and a backpack,
Arizona,
Flagstaff to Something-brook.
Young men, fast car,
ex-navy now ranchers,
women, booze, bored.

Gallop,
wind head head,
eyesting,
Tucomcarrie, questioned by
no smile state trooper
as if we had
machine gun in back pocket.
“Sorry Sir.”
We slept in a park,
sleeping bags
at the edge of a tornado.

At Texas gas stations
our driver bought watches,
then a gun.
We walked to Gainesville,
bought bus tickets to New York
and washed our clothes.