Abena Songbird

AWASSOS/Bear Song

©Abena Songbird

Kodiak bears spear trout

sending grand arches of spray, silver flecks

dotting their matted lake fur like paint

swallowing rainbows

Inupiaq, Inuit dance their hunting

bloated from sweet berry gorging

their breath

stale with fetid waters and fish

\Bear song

Ursa major lumbers across the night

bear boy dancing up his seven sisters

as Karuk and Coast Miwok

sing the bear songs

healing

sending up their prayers cloaked in angelica root

bear root, bear grass baskets hold the sickness

vomited up by the sucking doctor

A Lakota drug & alcohol counselor transforms to bear and back

in the dreams of his clients

in talking circles where they spew forth their disease

on Mato Paha they pray

send up the smoke, leave the flags

for Unci Maka

\Awassos, Bear song

beaver fell more trees

their pact with bear

for easy access to honey

our cousins who walk upright

pre-Christianity

bear medicine sprouted from the first awakening

our reclusive self up from a long slumber

with new cubs

while papal black robe scat

dots the New Colony Forest

in Hudson Bay the great polar

has cubs

that starve from global warming

this lord of the mountain

in Japan

like wolf are the wild self

holding vestige to a time of old growth forests

when bear, wolf, salmon, eagle, deer, hawk, bobcat

cougar, mountain lion , buffalo, and elk all had great nations

and will dance them again into being

Awassos/bear song

Flashfloods and Wildfires

©2006 Abena Songbird

Flashfloods and wildfires

tensions brewing beneath the surface

erupting and overflowing

I don’t want to lay awake

thinking of the dangers of flashfloods

of wildfires

tendered from fox fire deep

in hills hit by lightning

where plaster dinosaurs

overlook a city short on humor

long on judgment

bronze statues of white men standing witness

to trigger itchy cops

when the target is brown with black hair

I don’t want to imagine

rocket fuel found in breast milk

how it may jettison a future

of children with Alzheimer’s and ADD

running a nation

when I left Oakland the hills were burning

I came to Rapid in April snows

only to find these hills burning in May

I thought the fires had followed me

I've come to think of this land, this place

as a place of extremes

where wildfires and sun dances

burn into a landscape

scorching dancers on sage

rocks cracking, popping in prayer

to creeks overflowing

claiming one more homeless Indian

victim to a careless intoxicating stupor

or like in the 90's - a slew of murders

Indian men

floating down Rapid Creek

being rolled

by gangs

white boys

looking for easy prey

when I went with my mother to the Abenaki tribal center

it was late November, the snows were grayed

by car exhaust, the trees were heavy with ice - bare and brittle

when we got there we brought venison to gift but there

was no one there to receive it

the irony was not lost on me

that day I went to enroll,

to give blood to my nation

was the same day that everyone was at a funeral -

a young Abenaki girl had killed herself

taken her blood away - back home

now here in Rapid, wildfires and flashfloods

the youth drop like flies from methamphetamine

every other weekend someone’s eating real well

at another Lakota funeral

the highway here claims more human road kill

than animal

from the rivers of blood and alcohol

extremes

I remember at 15 I dove into a falls in the spring

The water too cold, too fast, too high

I don’t want to remember being rescued from drowning

rushed from Spring's icy waters

by hanks of my hair

So long and flowing, itself a waterfall

How our hair braids us to the earth

how it saved me

I don’t want to lay awake thinking of words

created from sparks

of attraction

of rage

of the alchemy of extremes

flashfloods and wildfires

Jeff's Song

©2013 Abena Songbird

He brought to us richness

A certain opulence

left in his wake

This brown man

From the eastern shores

the people of the purple shell

his Narragansett

he gave permission for indulgence

fine food, wine, art

jazz

the company of Lena Horne, Satchmo, Billie Holiday

a time of elegance, and pain

he left his signature

we were swimming in his light

poolside dolphins

shimmering in turquoise and azure

everything was amplified

we were hothouse flowers orchids

basking in his Leo shine

His laughter could bellow

His anger could shake

And rage for injustice

Yet you could see the little boy

Standing in his mother's garden

upper New York state

squinting toward the camera in dangling cowboy hat

mischievous

his art spoke to spirit

colors dancing demanding attention

so much beauty

in his wake

he brought to her a big love

this lady of the Solstice

blossomed

in his time

This brown man

From the eastern shores

the people of the purple shell

his Narragansett

now he is on his journey

he has crossed the star bridge of souls

now with Frank

big cigars and horns

cognac and Tiparillos

he is jazzing it up

with Mom and Lena

sending down his laughter

covering her with love

for the ages