Joseph Bruchac - Poetry

Thursday Nov 21

On Hiatus

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.