he eschewed the label,
“Native American,” for he was *****,
and he wasn't ashamed he liked his spirits
dollar wine worked as well

cirrhosis was a family trait
though he didn't learn the word until an army doc
admonished him, saying he would earn the curse
by 45, if he kept it up

and he did, even more after that crazy
Asian war, where he killed a half dozen men
they called yellow, though to Walter, they looked
to be his emaciated brown cousins

he could stand tall, straight
with a pint of rot gut in him, burning
his belly, but not causing his head to spin
though it helped him block them out:

those he did not know; those he
slaughtered like lambs with the gun they issued him;
those who inhabited a space just behind his eyes
whenever they closed, night or day

someone found him, in his pickup bed
dead from exposure, from too many years
on the bottle, too many dreams he tried to drown
and too many ghosts to haunt his nights

Gallup, New Mexico, 1999

I found a skeleton of a bus
so far into the pines, I knew it had been
dropped from the sky, to save me  

they had to be far behind,
the other side of the stream, where those hounds
lost my scent    

Jed and Tonto didn’t follow me across
the shallows, and I’d bet all the money I ever stole
those curs and the posse ate them up    

there was almost half a moon, though
inside the bus was black; outside was freezing
drizzle pattering on the roof  

the coat I filched was soaked    
my trousers too--nobody told me
Alabama got this cold  

if they had
I wouldn’t have believed them
until that night  

I curled up in a ball
behind the driver’s seat, shoved
my frozen hands in my shirt    

then I heard that hiss, and saw
those eyes--I stayed quiet, more quiet even
than when I hid from John law    

then she growled, deep, slow
but I kept watching her eyes--emerald and still, still
in the place I first saw them    

then we were both silent  
I’d  *** my drawers before I’d move
freeze outside... get ate inside  

the hours passed fast; I drifted,
dreamed a little of being back inside, and woke
when the sun hit the cracked windshield    

she was still there
with two cubs nursing, now used to my smell
I suppose, since she didn’t jump  

when I slid down the bus stairs
into the frosty grass, where I saw a doe
chewing forbs, close to the roots  

lucky the lion had her babes stuck
to her teats, lucky I was between the cat and prey,
lucky the bus was in that grove

anonymous winds
bend tall Timothy grasses,
wake rabbits napping
in the brush

they ripple the surface
of the stock tanks, tickle the haunches
of the beasts who wade there
to slurp the tepid waters

they birth red dust devils
for my eyes to follow, as they scud
through mesquite, and hopscotch over canyons
older than time

one day, soon, they will blow
over a shallow earth bed; I will not hear
their sibilant song, but my sleep will be deep,
unperturbed by their mystic music

the white coat lords,  
the army of nurses, the aides, didn't think
he understood their language

nor did they know
he had been a warrior in his homeland
and bore scars, inside, out

they paid little attention,
as he buffed lackadaisical linoleum, scrubbed porcelain *******,
making them ethereally white

though the amputees,
the hobbled, the battle burned, would wake
to the sound of his labors:

his broom swaying to and fro,
a softer metronome for their ringing ears
a cadence of condolences
for their beating hearts

a thousand miles we traveled to see
your jack-hammered giants--we arrived at dusk
just as the torrents began, bathing your
chiseled countenances

we hid in our chariot of modernity
wipers flapping in syncopated time, Bluetooth belching
out words from kin, "have a good time,"
"sorry for the storm..."  

but I wasn't, for lightning struck
a blackjack pine, and four mammoth men
came to life, their sheen now electric, their long
mute voices once again a resounding roar

I carried you
through a minefield, past ***** traps;
though the mortars lobbed their lethal loads
and the rifles spat speeding streams of death,
all was silent, until we reached the end of the field,
and I lay you on the grass

you thanked me, and asked me
to hold you--you were so cold, you said
I put my arms around you, and looked back
across the field--a stretch of fire now, blazing
the night sky, casting eternal light on you and me,
two young brothers I spied, prostrate,
still, on the other side of the field
we had crossed…still

on the other side