Test

I had a teacher who was a weekend archeologist.

She brushed the ground for Native leftovers . . .

a form of human interaction.   She affirmed:

“I don’t study any Indian under three hundred years old.”

I told her I was a poet. Her eyes subdued by inquisition,

her question scraped me slightly . . .

“You mean like Byron, Shelley or Keats?”

“No, not quite,” I said . . .  “I’m alive.”

My sole proof of humanness is that I create.

I can’t determine what will be smothered, what will erode

or resist burial and rise from the soil protruding

like noncurrent bones forming fingers,

fingers of swimming hands,

swimming in soil-waves.

Can’t say if brushes will dust my words

as proof of signs of life and standing the test of time.

Like my Native blood,

poetry is a live fish, un-caught.

The watchers around me are Baudelaire, Blake and Bly;

Shaman and Storyteller.   Just to be alive with a found soul

is all the test I have time for.

We are bones swimming in soil-waves,

we emerge with a sunken jewel -

that’s all the test we have time for.