Monday Nov 25

On Hiatus

Joseph Bruchac - Poetry

Joseph Bruchac's poems, which often reflect his Abenaki Indian heritage and the Adirondack Mountain region of New York State  where he has spent his life, have appeared in over 1,000 magazines and anthologies over the past five decades.  His web site can be found here.
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Late Summer on Glass Factory Mountain
 
 
Four immature hummingbirds
engage in aerial pirouettes,
hover in mid-air, thrust out their chests
to contest for spots at the window feeders.
 
Storing energy
for the long, hard flight,
some may not survive
to their wintering grounds.
 
The whirr of their blurred wings
is music as far removed
from human philosophy
as the stone-piercing chorus
of this summer’s cicadas.
 
I see one of those fragile insects,
readied for mating and flight.
It’s high on the trunk
of a winter-killed hemlock,
far removed from the earthy husk.
Twenty feet below its perch,
its former burrowing self—
stuck to a hundred-year-old locust post.
 
Lone sentinel fences
and farms long gone,
that post may outlast
all of our short songs.
 
 
 
 
Tutuwas
 
 
 I know the names
 on this land
 have been changed,
 printed on maps
 made by those
 who claim their ownership.
 
 Some say nothing survives.
 
 But the wind
 still sings
 the same song
 of our breath.
 
 The hilltop trees
 still bend like dancers
 in ceremonies
 that never ended.
 
 And the little pines,
 tutuwas, tutuwas,
 lift up, protected
 from the weight of snow
 by the held-out arms
 of their elders.