Archive of New Mexico Poetry – Gary Stevens

It Is

a man
wearing a wolf headdress
dancing a love song
for his Raven girl

a dip
pull
then raise
and the barnacles
on the stomach of a blue whale
are dislodged
by the canoe bottom
and drop
in liquid turquoise

a bear walking away
from the smell of blue berries
staining the mouth of a little Indian boy
packed like a jelly donut

an echo
of falling cottonwood trees
on an eroding river bank
in the crying song
of a mother

the glimmer of salmon skin
as a pod of killer whales
hunting like a wolf pack
scares dinner for the children

the gawl of the drum
as a Tlingit
who had his throat slit in prison
sings in a cracked voice
a love song
to his bride

the Christian Churches
apologizing
for destroying native languages

the eagle talon
connected to the leg
hanging off the back
of a 60 pound king salmon
that you pull over the side

the smell of cherry wood
in a cedar clan house
built on Shakes Island

fire
used to cook salmon
on a winter day

the milky tide
ebbing away from the beach
caked with herring eggs

an adz texture
on a totem pole
depicting a wood worm

Raven
bitching about the dark
as he walked the beach

About the Poet
Gary Stevens (Tlingit) is majoring in creative writing at the Institute of American Indian Arts. He is the recipient of a 1999-2000 Truman Capote Scholarship.