He is walking slowly where step by step
measure by measure in the lush meadow
he plays a dulcet meandering air
inviting me to join him there
unbound by dark and foreboding forces
of the viral pervasive present.
I join him and we fly to the open plain
recently refreshed by rain
Oklahoma and its green fields
where the spirits of Native peoples reside
and in soft spring breezes glide
and remember their ancestors’ names
and the simple childhood games
they played kicking up dust of earth
in earshot of their mothers who gave birth
to those precious souls and bodies brown
made of love and Red River and ground.
The flute’s tune again catches me
in its lively streaming strain
and pulls me up to airy heights
to join the dance of darkness and light
in spirit realms where beauty
and reality tango together in peace.
I bow to spiritual writer and mystic Richard Rohr and Kiowa, Pulitzer Prize winning author, painter and poet N. Scott Momaday who grew up in Oklahoma and once said “Realism is not what it’s cracked up to be.”