Flowers For Socrates

by NONA BLYTH CLOUD

The Friday after Thanksgiving has been designated as Native American Heritage Day by Congress, and signed into law by President George W. Bush, but to many Americans, it is ‘Black Friday’ the unofficial start to the Holiday shopping season, a pair of events that jostle each other uneasily.

For this post in honor of Native American Heritage Month, I’ve chosen three poets who speak of the past and the present with keen visions for both.

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Kimberly Blazer, a White Earth Chippewa and Anishinaabe,  grew up on the White Earth Reservation in Minnesota. She is a poet, essayist, fiction writer and anthology editor. Her poetry collection Trailing You (1994) won the Native Writer’s Circle of the Americas First Book Award. In 1991, she co-founded the multicultural writers’ organization Word Warriors. Currently, she is the Poet Laureate of the state of Wisconsin.

In this poem, she uses the Japanese Haiku form within a larger poem which combines images of the natural world with phrases like “mechanical as a red oil rig” to weave the past and present together.

Haiku Journey

i. Spring

the tips of each pine
the spikes of telephone poles
hold gathering crows

may’s errant mustard
spreads wild across paved road
look both ways

roadside treble cleft
feeding gopher, paws to mouth
cheeks puffed with music

yesterday’s spring wind
ruffling the grey tips of fur
rabbit dandelion

ii. Summer

turkey vulture feeds
mechanical as a red oil rig
head rocks down up down

stiff-legged dog rises
goes grumbling after squirrel
old ears still flap

snowy egret—curves,
lines, sculpted against pond blue;
white clouds against sky

banded headed bird
this ballerina killdeer
dance on point my heart

iii. Fall

leaf wind cold through coat
wails over hills, through barren trees
empty garbage cans dance

damp September night
lone farmer, lighted tractor
drive memory’s worn path

sky black with migration
flocks settle on barren trees
leaf birds, travel songs

october moon cast
over corn, lighted fields
crinkled sheaves of white

1. iv. Winter

ground painted in frost
thirsty morning sun drinks white
leaves rust golds return

winter bare branches
hold tattered cups of summer
empty nests trail twigs

lace edges of ice
manna against darkened sky
words turn with weather

now one to seven
deer or haiku syllables
weave through winter trees

Northern follows jig
body flashes with strike, dive:
broken line floats up.

Kimberly Blazer, “Haiku Journey” from Apprenticed to Justice, © 2007 by Kimberly Blaeser – Salt Publishing

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