When Winter Come Read Free Page B

himself.
    When he carries me back home to our mat
    folded up in his arms like a child
    we lie down in the lap of the night
    both empty and full     and sleep.

Circle a Gifts
Circle a Gifts
    Goodrich has recovered from “the Louis Veneri”
[syphilis] . . . I cured him as I did Gibson last winter
by the uce of mercury.
    â€”Meriwether Lewis, January
27, 1806
    The men in the party don’t know
    that the white men who come first left a gift
    Capt. Lewis believe he can cure
    with something he call mercury
    â€™til the men start to lose they sight.
    Them be surprised when a ax we trade
    come back to meet us many miles and moons
    up the M’soura, but even bigger surprises return
    after we travels all the way to the ochian
    an trade lil’ pieces a ribbon an trinkets
    for a good time ’tween young Chinook thighs
    Surprises that return to the givers
    like a rabid bear easing out ova winter cave.

Forsaking All Others
Forsaking All Others
    York’s Nez Perce wife
    Babies have mothers to feed them
    and keep them warm
    Old men have children
    to comfort their slow gray years
    What kind of man needs another man
    to carry him food, make his bed
    and pack his things
    and him not lame or blind?
    What kind of man
    makes one with such big medicine
    pretend to be a child
    and less?
    How will he treat our warriors when
    he does not need our food to stay alive?
    I want to spit on the ground
    when he comes near.
    I can not respect the redheaded one
    and honor my black man too.

Meteorology
Meteorology
    I finds myself returning
    to the sweat lodge at night
    asking these beautiful an kind people’s
    Great Spirit
    to heap nothing but blessings
    upon his red chil’ren
    almost as much as I wish for even more snow
    to keep us here long enough
    to see my woman’s belly swell
    with the only gift
    I can leave her an them.
    A nappy lil’ new York
    who will only know
    one Massa.
    The one that give an protect life
    an not the one
    that make men slaves.
    Capt. Lewis pace back an forth
    Massa Clark cuss the whole day
    at the deep mountain snow that stand
    â€™tween us an the great plains.
    Them both worry that us all grow too fat
    an lazy to finish the journey home.

False Impressions
False Impressions
    York’s Nez Perce wife
    for Craig Howe
    When winter comes, my people circle up and agree
    on the most important thing that happened in the year,
    an awful flood, an important battle, or the passing
    of a great warrior, and boil it down to a picture
    scratch it out on rawhide, and charge the storyteller
    with remembering the details of the story.
    The captains believed they impressed Native people
    with their power and guns and mirrors and coins
    and beads, but they didn’t even earn a winter count.

Praise Song
Praise Song
    York’s hunting shirt
    York be the strongest, blackest man
    anybody this side of the big river has ever seen.
    He might show his strength, strut, dance a jig,
    or even tease the Indian children,
    but he never brag ’bout that what make him
    even more proud, that what connect him
    to his true man-self, what the natives respect
    him most for, his prowess and feats as a hunter.
    What other slave you know carry a gun and a hatchet
    and a knife sharp enough to split a man’s ribs and still
    his heart, but be too self mastered to even think on it?
    Useful tools, knives and guns, but ain’t no magic in them.
    The magic was in York. He had the power.
    How else you figure a man, twice as big as some,
    larger than most, step in among the dead leaves
    and wild things and simply disappear?
    How else you think he walk right up on wild game
    have it sniff the air, tweak its ears
    and still not see him less than a touch away?
    Standing as still as an oak. Breathing like the forest.
    How you reckon he never bring home anything tough
    and hard to chew, muscles still in shock from fear
    or struggle? He took his game with so much speed
    and skill the animals thought they