1.
Spirits trample the rain-starved
Plains like herds of fattened buffalo.

Cloaked in tawny hides, they pound
the earth: invincible grass dancers.

From the ground spring their harvests
of sickness and health, good and evil.

A shaman ignites his sage bundle,
tosses pebbles on the tipi floor.

He stumbles backward, eyes turned
inward, arms outstretched to receive

the medicine's blessing. He soars in vapor
trails of hawks, surpassing the smoke,

the sky, the spirits' singing to the drum,
the cosmos' luminous fringe.

Eyes on fire like liquid lightning,
he peers into the future, the past,

liberates forces of healing, gathers up
baskets of goodness, effusive with wonder.

2.
Above the dusty brown hills, the turquoise
sky casts shadows on ancestral shores.

All must cross the waters, awaken from
their trances, devour supernatural dreams.

The shaman cries out in ancient rapture,
his flesh on tenterhooks, shredding into leaves

of supplication, tears of blood and water.
Horses snort in the distance. Raptors

circle overhead. The shaman grapples
with the spirits, ***** power from their

dances, grinds grasses' green seedlings,
the growing treasure of the earth.

He calls down hawks of heaven, builds
a bed of red feathers. Smoke wavers

through the night sky, orange as a harvest moon.
In the deep sleep of bears, the dying rise up.