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Can be cracked or am that       you didn't consider me or I thought so recovering in a nap     You took the 4th of July beers In the movie she was Asian and playing an Asian part   singing white on white in the white room I want to strum or mask this day Ask a question of the large “picture” window like why and why and also why to think of the napalmed girl in the picture

Forty degrees; the threat of rain. That time of fall When we are most inclined to end it all. Denim-jacketed, with a faded sweatshirt hood, He draws his plane along a length of wood, Then takes a chisel to a cornice piece With two light taps. His movements never cease; His cracked and callused hands, in gloves with fingers cut, Rub up for warmth, then start like hares hawked by his thought. He knows no other work; wants none. He learned this from His father—brace and auger, bob and plumb— The same way he learned how to hunt or take a beating: Not by words but by a look, and by repeating Mutely each grimace, wince, set of the jaw. His job is more than workmanlike. No flaw Or gap offends the eye. Each post and bull-nose stair Seems proof of love—if love is proved by excess care.

Home’s the place we head for in our sleep. Boxcars stumbling north in dreams don’t wait for us. We catch them on the run. The rails, old lacerations that we love, shoot parallel across the face and break just under Turtle Mountains. Riding scars you can’t get lost. Home is the place they cross. The lame guard strikes a match and makes the dark less tolerant. We watch through cracks in boards as the land starts rolling, rolling till it hurts to be here, cold in regulation clothes. We know the sheriff’s waiting at midrun to take us back. His car is dumb and warm. The highway doesn’t rock, it only hums like a wing of long insults. The worn-down welts of ancient punishments lead back and forth. All runaways wear dresses, long green ones, the color you would think shame was. We scrub the sidewalks down because it's shameful work. Our brushes cut the stone in watered arcs and in the soak frail outlines shiver clear a moment, things us kids pressed on the dark face before it hardened, pale, remembering delicate old injuries, the spines of names and leaves.

In spite of all the learned have said, I still my old opinion keep; The posture, that we give the dead, Points out the soul's eternal sleep. Not so the ancients of these lands— The Indian, when from life released, Again is seated with his friends, And shares again the joyous feast. His imaged birds, and painted bowl, And venison, for a journey dressed, Bespeak the nature of the soul, Activity, that knows no rest. His bow, for action ready bent, And arrows, with a head of stone, Can only mean that life is spent, And not the old ideas gone. Thou, stranger, that shalt come this way, No fraud upon the dead commit— Observe the swelling turf, and say They do not lie, but here they sit. Here still a lofty rock remains, On which the curious eye may trace (Now wasted, half, by wearing rains) The fancies of a ruder race. Here still an aged elm aspires, Beneath whose far-projecting shade (And which the shepherd still admires) The children of the forest played! There oft a restless Indian queen (Pale Shebah, with her braided hair) And many a barbarous form is seen To chide the man that lingers there. By midnight moons, o'er moistening dews; In habit for the chase arrayed, The hunter still the deer pursues, The hunter and the deer, a shade! And long shall timorous fancy see The painted chief, and pointed spear, And Reason's self shall bow the knee To shadows and delusions here.

Hunted and sung unhunted / unsung clump of loghouse / chaxed hill unuttered / unstrung clistered bow hunted and unsung hunted / strung hunted / sung.

Now begins the festival and rivalry of late fall, the weird debauch and daring debacle of frat-boy parties as students parade foggy streets in mock processions, bearing on shoulders scrawny effigies of dead, defeated Indians cut from trees, where, in the twilight, they had earlier been hung. "Just dummies," laughs our dad, "Red Indians hung or burned—it's only in jest." Every fall brings the Big Game against Stanford, where young scholars let off steam before the debacle they may face of failed exams. "You're dead wrong," he says to Mom. "They don't mock real, live Indians." Around UC campus, mock lynchings go on. Beneath porches we see hung the scarecrow Natives with fake long braids, dead from the merrymaking. On Bancroft Way, one has fallen indecorously to a lawn, a symbol of the debacle that happened three generations ago in California's hills, where Native peoples were strung up. (A way of having fun? Where did they go, those Indian ghosts?) "Their kids perform mock war dances, whooping, re-enacting scenes of a debacle white folks let loose," chides Mom. "Meanwhile we hang portraits of presidents on school walls and never let fall the old red, white, and blue. My dear brother is dead because he fought in a White man's war. How many dead Indians do they need to feel okay? This whole thing wears on my soul." In the dark car we go silent, and the fall night gets chillier. In yards, blazing bonfires mock the stars that glow palely somewhere above. A thin moon hangs over the tule fogs. I've never heard the word "debacle” before and wonder what it means. "What's a debacle, Mom? " I ask. "Oh, honey, it's a terrible and deadly collapse. Complete ruin." I've noticed how the hung Indians have their heads slumped forward. They wear old clothes, headbands with feathers, face paint, moc- casins instead of boots. Little do we know, this fall, living Indians at Feather Falls leave tobacco to mark that, indeed, we're still here, lungs full of indigenous air.

‘How can the red men be forgotten, while so many of our states and territories, bays, lakes, and rivers, are indelibly stamped by names of their giving?’ Ye say they all have passed away, That noble race and brave, That their light canoes have vanished From off the crested wave; That ’mid the forests where they roamed There rings no hunter shout, But their name is on your waters, Ye may not wash it out. ’Tis where Ontario’s billow Like Ocean’s surge is curled, Where strong Niagara’s thunders wake The echo of the world. Where red Missouri bringeth Rich tribute from the west, And Rappahannock sweetly sleeps On green Virginia’s breast. Ye say their cone-like cabins, That clustered o’er the vale, Have fled away like withered leaves Before the autumn gale, But their memory liveth on your hills, Their baptism on your shore, Your everlasting rivers speak Their dialect of yore. Old Massachusetts wears it, Within her lordly crown, And broad Ohio bears it, Amid his young renown; Connecticut hath wreathed it Where her quiet foliage waves, And bold Kentucky breathed it hoarse Through all her ancient caves. Wachuset hides its lingering voice Within his rocky heart, And Alleghany graves its tone Throughout his lofty chart; Monadnock on his forehead hoar Doth seal the sacred trust, Your mountains build their monument, Though ye destroy their dust. Ye call these red-browned brethren The insects of an hour, Crushed like the noteless worm amid The regions of their power; Ye drive them from their father’s lands, Ye break of faith the seal, But can ye from the court of Heaven Exclude their last appeal? Ye see their unresisting tribes, With toilsome step and slow, On through the trackless desert pass A caravan of woe; Think ye the Eternal’s ear is deaf? His sleepless vision dim? Think ye the soul’s blood may not cry From that far land to him?

The trade-wind jingles the rings in the nets around the racks by the docks on Indian River. It is the same jingle of the water among roots under the banks of the palmettoes, It is the same jingle of the red-bird breasting the orange-treesout of the cedars. Yet there is no spring in Florida, neither in boskage perdu, nor on the nunnery beaches.

I arise from dreams of thee In the first sweet sleep of night, When the winds are breathing low, And the stars are shining bright: I arise from dreams of thee, And a spirit in my feet Hath led me—who knows how? To thy chamber window, Sweet! The wandering airs they faint On the dark, the silent stream— The Champak odours fail Like sweet thoughts in a dream; The Nightingale's complaint, It dies upon her heart;— As I must on thine, Oh, belovèd as thou art! Oh lift me from the grass! I die! I faint! I fail! Let thy love in kisses rain On my lips and eyelids pale. My cheek is cold and white, alas! My heart beats loud and fast;— Oh! press it to thine own again, Where it will break at last.

There’s a farm auction up the road. Wind has its bid in for the leaves. Already bugs flurry the headlights between cornfields at night. If this world were permanent, I could dance full as the squaw dress on the clothesline. I would not see winter in the square of white yard-light on the wall. But something tugs at me. The world is at a loss and I am part of it migrating daily. Everything is up for grabs like a box of farm tools broken open. I hear the spirits often in the garden and along the shore of corn. I know this place is not mine. I hear them up the road again. This world is a horizon, an open sea. Behind the house, the white iceberg of the barn.