Gordon Henry, Jr.

The boy painted himself white and ran into the darkness. We let the words “he may be dead, bury him,” bury him. We took his clothes to the rummage sale in the basement of the mission We put his photographs and drawings in a birdcage and covered it with a starquilt. For four nights voices carried clear to the river. After winter so many storms moved in strangers came among us They danced They shoveled in the shadows of trees Then, somehow we all felt all of us were of this one boy.

Chemical angels ride into this vacant room as walls and windows drip away into western fronts, post depression farm boundaries barely barb-wired together, enclosed stone pile pastures a gray horse standing still, facing north, a snort of breath drifting to a rail car passing horizon the wind hinting the spirit of ice nights so long you can only hope the red blood circling for warmth in your cells don’t freeze here with the rest of this lost American dream.

I am standing outside in Minnesota ghost wind recalling names in winter mist The road smells of dogs two days dead White photographers talk in the house of mainstream media I can’t articulate the agony of Eagle Singer’s children to them. We celebrate the old man while another generation shoots crushed and heated prescriptions sells baskets, machinery, the fixtures yet to be installed in the house, yet to be heated by the tribal government, for another night stolen by the stupors and the wondrous pleasure of forget everything medicines. Back inside Uncle Two Dogs rolls me a smoke out of organic American Spirit I look to a last cup of coffee. The way home fills with snow our tracks human and machine.

The story goes from in a rainfall to sister walking a field browned autumn. And when she arrives winter has come, so the old man rises from his chair, picks up matches, pipes and tools, and walks out to begin again. The sculptures grow by the day, birds in ice, recognizable eagles, a bear who began as a man in a moment of dance. He does this in ice, all winter carving at dawn, carving at dusk. And sister after walking a field browned autumn, arrives, watches from the east window, waits, goes out to him in spring, taps him on the shoulder and points to the pools of water he's standing over.