Original Fire
Selected and New Poems
Excerpt
Jacklight
The same Chippewa word is used both for flirting and hunting game, while another Chippewa word connotes both using force in intercourse and also killing a bear with one's bare hands.
- R. W. Dunning, Social and Economic Change Among the Northern Ojibwa (1959)
We have come to the edge of the woods,
out of brown grass where we slept, unseen,
out of knotted twigs, out of leaves creaked shut,
out of hiding.
At first the light wavered, glancing over us.
Then it clenched to a fist of light that pointed,
searched out, divided us.
Each took the beams like direct blows the heart answers.
Each of us moved forward alone.
We have come to the edg ... read full excerpt from Original Fire: Selected and New Poems ebook
