Faint Echo

Transmission loss is inevitable
With such broad spectrum distortion
Carrying a candle through darkness
Is a miner for gold
Or coal
Or anything that matters
To the lords of the underground.
But when I yell
It echoes back to me
Around the field
From the trees
From the hill
Between the buildings and back,
Which gives me motivation
To try again
Though my understanding is faint
As I watch a blowing bag
Floating in the wind.
Today it is not dusty,
Though a slight breeze comes on,
It is muggy and heavy
An extra 30 pounds to a person
That sweats through a shirt
With the mere though of lifting
An arm in toil.
So where do I sit
In such heavy silence?
At the crossroads
With a miner on my shoulder
Torn down ligaments
Effortlessly gazing
But with sharp eyes watching
Everything being lost.

Moon at Midnight – Part XXX (day 2004)

(part XXIX)

Willow knew how to throw up the teepee
But I quickly learned how, too,
It was my first time
But with Willow and Moon Cow giving orders
It went up easily
We set up Moon Cow’s close by ours
And slowly we became acquainted with our new home
For the summer, anyways,
For now it was our home.

When we first stopped
And made our home here
Mountain Chief had sent out scouts
In every direction
To make sure that we were indeed
Not going to be easily found
Every second day new scouts
Would relieve the old scouts
And so it went for the first while
Without any event to note of.

We learned that in the two valleys to the North
About a 4 hour horseback ride
There was a small family settlement
Mountain Chief asked me if I would go
And introduce myself to them
So that they would know we meant peace
But also to see if they were friendlies
To see if they were friendly to Natives.

When I arrived at their house
I wasn’t expecting what I found
Truth be told, I didn’t know what I was expecting
But at any rate
What I found really didn’t seem normal
She was deaf and he was blind
They had a dog with three legs
And a son, well more a man they called boy,
That was a good two feet taller then both of them
And to my untrained eye,
Didn’t look a lick like either one of them
They all seemed happy enough though
And I got along just nice with them.

Her name was Sara
And it turned out that her hearing
Wasn’t as bad as one first thought
And what she lacked in hearing
She made up for in a delicious soup
His name was Bill, and he was an old miner
He had come West to the hills to find gold
And I didn’t ask if he had found it
But he did tell me he found Sara
And knew he had found what he came for
Sara had already had the son
By another miner who had taken her
One night while visiting the saloon in town
The young man’s name was Johnny,
Who they both called Johnny-boy
And just watching his hands work an axe
For firewood to get ol’ Sara’s stove roaring
One could see he was as gentle as a pillow
But as strong as an ox
Bill told me he went blind from drinking too much moonshine
And that was the last time
He touched the: “Gat-dang stuff. Pardon my French, little lady.”

part XXXI