They wondered why they never got mail anymore. Dust devils dancing just beyond the miasma of smoke- a creak of old wood, howling in a broken wind. What happened to those parched words? Those words pressed in ink, cursive, and the secret language of longing.
Coyote wanders the dry creek bed,
his paws heavy with dust,
the kind that clings to you,
weighs down your steps like the years.
He used to run fast,
chase the wind and outrun the sky,
but now even the wind’s forgotten his name.
The ground doesn’t laugh beneath him anymore,
it just sighs,
and the stars?
They’ve turned their backs.
Absence.
Whites of eyes strained in the sun, they sat rubbing the crust from hard pupils.
“I have never seen the other side of the sun, have you?” Kindred asks, biting their parched lips.
“Once, when I was interdimensional, I swooped in for a gander. It is unlike anything you have ever seen.” Cameron proclaims.
“How so?” Kindred replies.
“Would you like to see?”
With that Cameron pulls out his satchel that holds the keys to the skies and raises it up to Kindred’s face. They focus their eyes like an Eagle, pin point meaning and softly reply.
“Sure, I would be interested in seeing the dying sun.” They say.
In a sacrament of smoke, they traced the sky open, pulling stars into mass, and with a slip of the wrist, blast into infinity. The voyage opened to the constellations drawing tracers against warm faces. Higher and higher they flew- souls adrift the apex, thrown through universes. Taking the long way home, until the faint glow of the sun exploded into fire, and then darkness.
“Oh, it’s a feeling, isn’t it?” Kindred asks. “The black hole sun, it is a feeling”
The November wind, sharp as a bone from an old song, sweeps across the mesa. The land holds the memory of every step, every word, every breath. Here, everything that was still lingers, woven into the pulse of the earth, into the howl that rises over the New Mexican horizon. In the distance, the radio tower blinks its red light like a forgotten heartbeat, its rhythm steady but fading, as if the stories it carries are slipping into the past.
Billy George, an elderly shepherd who has lived alone on the Mesa since his wife died a few years back, moves through this land, tired, but not broken. His feet know the way, and his voice, a soft thread in the Dine language of his ancestors, wraps around the sheep as he guides them to their nightly coral.
“Yá’át’ééh, ch’íí’ yáhoot’ééł.”
(“Hurry up, it is getting dark”)
He is alone, but loneliness has no place here—not where the wind speaks and the land listens. The spirits of the old ones walk with him, their presence felt in every stone, every gust that rattles his small shack. A collection of wood, tin, and memories all tied to a humble anchor called home. As he steps onto his porch, he whispers.
“Ha’íísh’íí’ éí naashá?”
(“What is that feeling in the air?”)
Inside, the fire flickers to life, its flame a phoenix in the dimly lit room. The shepherd strips away the layers of the day—dust, sweat, the weight of time—as the warmth begins to fill the small space. He moves with the ease of one who has known this ritual for many lifetimes, preparing his simple meal, the kerosene lantern casting soft shadows against the walls. The old AM crank radio hums from the corner, static blending with the crackling fire, both familiar as an old song sung in an old tongue.
“T’áá shí éí, nihíji’ígíí yéego.”
(“Creator, protect us.”)
Tonight is different. The air is thick with the weight of something sinister, something stirring, just beyond the edges of the mesa. It is election night, and though the shepherd is far from the cities, far from the noise of machines and men, he can feel the unease. The wind carries whispers of unrest, and the radio speaks of a country on the brink of war. He can feel it too, in the way the fire burns a little too bright, in the anxious pulse of the flames.
“‘What a historic night here in this great, if not broken, America.” the radio announcer crackles. “A night that bears the fate of a nation, on the participation of its citizens. And tonight it looks as though the USA has come out unanimously, to say, “ENOUGH IS ENOUGH, We are tired of being divided.”
The sudden sound of bombs cuts the radio to static. It is the sky itself cracking open, splitting the silence. The shepherd jerks, startled, and the knife slips, blood pooling on the dirt floor. It is red like the setting sun, red like the blinking light on the radio tower, distant but steady. For a moment, he watches it drip, feeling the pulse of the earth in the cut, in the red glow outside, in his hurried heartbeat.
With quick hands, he pulls the curtains closed, shutting out the world beyond. He binds the wound with an old cloth, whispering a prayer as he ties the knot.
“T’áá shí éí, nihíji’ígíí yéego.”
(“Creator, protect us.”)
The radio, once a companion, now fills the small space with fear, and the shepherd, shaking off the unease, turns the dial until the familiar voice of Patsy Cline rises through the static.
*“I fall to pieces…”
In 1988, during my time in middle school, my US history teacher delivered the news to the class that the Cascade/ Watala tribes residing along the Columbia River were no longer in existence because they did not have a reservation. This revelation struck a chord within me, as I felt deeply connected to the stories of my ancestors, both in flesh and spirit. In response to this declaration, I boldly asserted that we were not extinct, but rather transformed. This pivotal moment opened my eyes to a profound sense of self, one intrinsically intertwined with the land and the crucial presence of the Salmon, a keystone species. It was an identity forged out of defiance against the encroachment of settler colonialism and the reservation system that sought to uproot us from our sacred river. From the initial encounters with settlers to the present day, settler colonialism has irrevocably reshaped the physical and cultural landscapes along the Nch’i-Wanna (Columbia River).
Throughout history, the Nch’i-Wanna has served as the ancestral homeland for various indigenous groups such as 
the Watala/ Cascade, Wishram-Wasco, Klickitat, Yakima, Wanapum, and others. Despite their differences, these diverse cultures shared a deep connection with the river and its abundant Salmon. Ancient legends speak of Coyote bestowing the gift of Salmon upon the River People. The Salmon, in turn, carried the hopes and prayers of countless generations, swimming upstream to their birthplace at the Cascades Rapids (which gave the Cascade Mountains their name), passing through The Dalles straits, and continuing on to Wyam, also known as Celilo Falls, and beyond. Each spring, thousands would gather along the mighty river to celebrate the arrival of the first Salmon. They would sing songs, engage in trade, play stick games, and forge strong bonds of kinship. These vibrant cultures held a deep reverence for the natural world and had a profound sense of place. Traditional ceremonies like the Feather Religion were conducted to honor and express gratitude to the natural world. These cultural practices play a vital role in preserving the identity and heritage of the Columbia River Indians. They are a people who have chosen to live outside the confines of reservations and forced relocation, instead embracing the ways of their ancestors and the lifeways of the Big River.
Magic of Place written in stone.
I. Pre-Contact to First Contact: Prehistoric Life on the Mid-Columbia River and the Coming Storms of Pestilence
“Long ago, when the world was young, all people were happy. The Great Spirit, whose home is in the sun, gave them all they needed. No one was Hungry, no one was cold. But after a while, two brothers quarreled over the land. The elder one wanted most of it, and the younger one wanted most of it. The Great Spirit decided to stop the quarrel. One night while the brothers were asleep he took them to a new land, to a country with high mountains. Between the mountains flowed a big river .” - Keeper of Fire, Bridge of the Gods Legend
Paul Kane drawing of one of my Watala/ Chinook ancestors.
When Lewis and Clark made their westward voyage in 1804-05 they came across a Peoples who were already dealing with the effects of European contact with the spread of the smallpox epidemic among Pacific Northwest tribes in 1781. (Boyd, 2021) These epidemics swept through with a fury, altering the lives of thousands in a matter of a blink. It was endemic of what was ahead for the Columbia River Indians with the coming wave of settler colonialism. The epidemics began breaking down traditional tribal identities early on, cutting the population in about one half by 1801, yet the smallpox was just the beginning of the pestilence that would engulf Columbia River Indians. In the 1820’s, a Wasco prophet was reported to have had a vision that foresaw a day when many Indigenous People would “lay dead like driftwood along the shores of the [Big River].” (Fisher, 2011, p. 28) That vision became true just a few years later.
Fort Vancouver, HJ Ware, 1848
II. “Spiritual Apocalypse” and the Making of the Dreamer Prophets
Tsagaglalal (She Who Watches) is said to be a death mask, a warning of pestilence
In the first two contact-era Plateau epidemics (I770s and 18oo-i), there is much to indicate that illness and death were not blamed on outside contagion. The peoples of the region turned inward for explanation. Smallpox, and other serious diseases, signaled an imbalance or power struggle among the personal spirit partners that animated the spiritual universe of the Plateau. Smallpox was read as a spiritual crisis within Plateau societies, and the prophetic movements of the time were an attempt to stem that crisis. (Vibert, 1995, p. 4)
These prophetic movements were a grounding force within the Columbia River Indians cosmology. A way to bring sense to their changing world and align themselves with the wisdom of their elders, and to bring them back to life to help aid in restoration of traditional lifeways.
One of the earliest accounts of a plateau prophet traveling to the mid-Columbia region was that of Kaúxuma núpika, an indigenous transgender prophet living on the Columbia Plateau in the early nineteenth century. Kaúxuma núpika traveled the length of the Columbia River, prophesying a coming apocalypse and the destruction of Native people by epidemic diseases brought by Euro American settlers. (Crawford O’Brien, 2015, p. 4) These prophecies resonated strongly with the River People, and was the beginning of creating the renegade spirit that would define the Columbia River Indian character as the settler apocalypse sharpened its teeth. Although Kaúxuma núpika hit a chord with the People, it would not be until the prophet Smohalla and his Dreamer Religion would emerge in the 1850’s that the Columbia River Indian would claim a spiritual resistance to the settler apocalypse.
Chief Smohalla
III. “Nurseries of Civilization”: Diaspora, Reservations, and Resistance Along the Big River and the Emergence of the Columbia River Indian Identity.
“Where will we go? Where will we make our homes? If we lose our country what shall we do?”- William Chinook (Fisher, 2011, p. 37)
At The Dalles, George Catlin. 1850
Treaty Lands
Congress passed two pieces of legislation that unabashedly favored whites over Indians in the 1850’s. Starting in 1850 with the Oregon Donation Land Act, a piece of legislation that proclaimed that every adult male citizen could claim 320 acres from the public domain, and then with The Indian Treaty Act of 1850, which conveniently robbed the Indigenous People of their ancestral homelands and their removal to reservations to pave the way for a settler land grab.(Fisher, 2011, p. 40) These blatant racist policies of land theft and removal had no intention of honoring the cultural diversity of the Big River, only to further imaginary cultural lines that had nothing to do with the living cultures who were stuck in a desperate loop of survival. That survival was paramount to the Columbia River Indian- a survival that required them to live the life of their ancestors and to restore the land to its original pristine condition- just as Smohalla had instructed them. A land where the Salmon gifted all they needed.
Yakama Wars of 1855
The general view of Indigenous Peoples along the Big River by settlers was that there was no such thing as a good or neutral Indian. The conflicts that were arising around the PNW at the time would be viewed as an organized and cohesive resistance to settlers, which was only intensified by the newspaper’s propaganda at the time. This culture of fear would lead to much violence provoked by settlers towards Indians. Just like with much of the United States at the time, volunteer vigilante militia groups would use excessive violence with the Indigenous populations of the Oregon territory. The violence fueled fear among the population, forcing many to the confines of reservations in hopes of escaping it. (Fisher, 2011, p. 57-58) This dichotomy would fuel a division among Indians, a division of traitors vs. traditionalists. The injustices that occurred in the seizing of lands and falsifying of treaties during the 1850’s even made the Governor cringe, even recommending that a new one be written up and ratified with the tribes. This recommendation was all but ignored when the senate ratified all treaties written four years earlier in 1859. “Mid-Columbia Indians accepted or rejected the treaties on their own terms, and continued to think of themselves as members of extended families and autonomous villages rather than constituents of confederated tribes.” (Fisher, 2011, p. 59) The 1850’s was a signal post to a greater sense of identity and a loose designation as Columbia River Indians that will accumulate recognition in the decades to come. All the while, the Salmon came and the River ran its seasonal cycles.
*****************************************
Columbia River Indian Family at Celilo Falls
The reservation system was an attempt to keep Indians contained, but the seasonal lifeways and kinship ties that had been practiced for millenia would not keep River People contained. This autonomy and mobility would frustrate the powers that be, unable to know for sure how many “reservation Indians” they had “contained”. Agent James Wilbur would judge the “wandering vagrant Columbia River Indians” as folks who would only come to “subsist upon their more provident relatives.” (Fisher, 2011, p.65) The traveling, reservationless Columbia River Indian became known as “renegades”, always to live outside the lines of containment- but within the lines of their ancestral duties to the land and kin.
Settler colonial demands that had created the “spiritual apocalypse” a short 60 years prior had failed to deter old lifeways from extinction. We often speak of resilience here in “Indian Country”, not because we wish we had it, but because without it, we would not be here today. This resilience was the lifeblood of a people who lived tied to the cycles of a Big River- and with big hearts, would continue to resist and fight off the dragons so intent on destruction. The resilience of watching your people perish and still awake with love in your heart is strength beyond measure. This resilience, this strength, this resolve to exist along the Big River is the benchmark of what it meant and means to be a Columbia River Indian. This resolve would continue to get us targeted as “renegades”, and by the 1870’s would land us the official government correspondence title as “Columbia River Indians”. (Fisher, 2011, p.68)
IV. Conclusion
That pivotal day in 1988 woke me up to the complexity of our identities along the
Nch’i-Wanna which was formed out of the “spiritual apocalypse” of settler colonialism. An identity forged with resilience and resolve to keep the Ancestors memories alive and practice the old ways. Settler colonialism did not drive us extinct, it only transformed us- a transformation that continues to this day.
References
Boyd, R. (2021, December 10). The first epidemics: How disease ravaged Indigenous Northwest peoples. The Seattle Times. https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/the-first-epidemics-how-disease-ravaged-indigenous-northwest-peoples/
Crawford O’Brien, S. (2015). Gone to the Spirits: A transgender prophet on the Columbia Plateau. Theology & Sexuality, 21(2), 125–143. https://doi.org/10.1080/13558358.2016.1215033
Fisher, A. H. (2011). Shadow tribe: The making of columbia river indian identity. University of Washington Press.
Hunn, E. S., & Selam, J. (1990). Nch’i-wána, “the big river”: Mid-Columbia indians and their land. University of Washington Press.
Vibert, E. (1995). “The natives were strong to live”: Reinterpreting early-nineteenth-century prophetic movements in the columbia plateau. Ethnohistory, 42(2), 197. https://doi.org/10.2307/483085
The broken backs of woman
who watched silently each
Spring as the children sprouted
like weeds on the prairie.
They were twins split
apart by lighting and
bad fathers. With each sound
laughter forgot its
Namesake. The life of
Fire.
Tender now stories held
in bad bones, marrow evaporates
from the thirst of light
consumed. The dry mouth
of aging.
Lost form and skin that feels
like dust. They learn to speak
On death beds, the only safety
She knew.
“Go outside, my child,
Before you forget your name.”
“My young men shall never work; men who work can not dream, and wisdom comes in dreams.” —Smohalla
In the still water quieted by pale dams, there is a whisper of dreams. A whisper that used to drive and propel hope through the changing landscape of “Indian Country” during the 1800s. In a time of great death and cultural genocide, many prophets spoke of dreams. Dreams that would bring the old ways back to the people.
Up River, Back Home
Dreams were a fabric in which to weave stories of resilience and hope. These dreams kept the people fed and brought prophecy. The dreamer brought the people a sense of peace that one day their Ancestors would rise again from their untimely deaths brought about from settler colonialism. These are old dreams dressed in new clothes, a way for the Ancestors to keep speaking to us.
Many felt that a dream led them to the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in 2016 to fight the Dakota Access Pipeline, including me. Many spoke of how it felt like their Ancestors had nudged them awake, as if the Earth was rising in a chorus of resistance to a machine that is hell-bent on destruction and greed. I recently read a Time magazine article about Standing Rock, that begins:
“Almost everyone who came to Standing Rock repeated the same legend. Someone, maybe Crazy Horse, had made a prophecy a long time ago—probably in the late 1870s—about the looming destruction of the planet.”
And that is exactly what called me there.
The liminal essence of dreaming was the fabric of everyday conversation in camp. From the morning prayers at the Sacred Fire to the frontlines of resistance, prophecy was on everyone’s lips. But to me, this was more than an Awakening. It was a confirmation that my dreams have always been telling me such things. Things I was beginning to finally understand.
********************************************
I was a young six-year-old; she was a timeless maiden. She changed my life! So clear the memory. So clear the vision. Awaken, the plume of ash on the horizon, safe near my parents. Several nights before, the whole house shook, the earth quaked, and I remember my curious thoughts: How did the Earth shake? What caused it? At that age, I was more of a scientist than an artist. But something changed in me, and my dreams would never be the same.
May 18th, 1980
It was true. She and so many members of my family stopped believing in the old stories and ways of our tribe and traded them in for a fundamentalist, vengeful god. When I was six and saw the timeless maiden Loowit blow her top on May 18, 1980, the old stories awoke in me. I wanted to know more about the old ways and how to practice them, but all I had to go off of were stories. And then the dreams came.
I used to pray, even if the sounds echoed into empty space. I had some faith that those words would reach some distant star, and portals would open up in the night sky. But instead I would dream. I would dream until I forgot what I was dreaming about. What was the reason for the journey? I often find the journey is the only thing that keeps me still most times, nodding off to the narcotic rhetoric of the modern age. It is in these journeys I meet my guides, who, with unforeseen hands, move the air of the fates in and out of existence. Coyote always seems to wake me up right before the climax. I was being shown a new way, a new story, if only I would listen.
Home Guard on the Columbia, by Benjamin A Gifford (1899) (photo- courtesy The Valley Library, Oregon State University)
The dream was this: Coyote was coming down the N’ch-iwana. He would stop at the lodges, rip open the doors, and yell, “Get up! The Salmon need you!”
He would stop at the fishing platforms dotted along the banks, yelling, “Stay alert! The Salmon are leaving! They need you!”
Everyone was bewildered.
“What is he talking about? Crazy trickster. He is always up to something!”
He would say back to them, “Get up! The Salmon need you!” Back and forth up the river he would go, telling anyone, whether they wanted to hear it or not, “Stay alert! The Salmon need you!”
I awoke to the feeling of sweat upon my brow, the dream resting on the tip of my tongue, goosebumps skimming my flesh, and my heart heavy with the message. “Get up! The Salmon need you!” I knew what was being asked of me; I felt it in my tired bones. It was the morning of October 26, 2016.
I was still sore and relearning the sacrament of swallowing. Just a week prior, I had a surgery on my esophagus to help cure a disease that nearly took my life. A month before my surgery, I had to live with a feeding tube in my esophagus, so it could start its healing process. I laid in bed, watching as the standoff at Standing Rock was unfolding. I felt a calling to be there, to help my cousins in North Dakota fight for their Sovereignty, and for the Mni Wiconi⁵, but was certain I would have to help from afar. On that cold October morning, I knew it was time to go.
I felt the old trickster’s words resonate in my heart. Indeed, the Salmon needed us. Since the first contact, Coyote had seen so much: from a river so fat with Salmon you could walk across it on top of their backs, to a silent dragon stuck in the gold pockets of a civilization determined to save a “savage” from its blasphemous ways. The roar of Wyam⁶ had grown silent to Coyote. And the Salmon, who fueled the stories and myth of old, were becoming ghosts before the spawn.
Celilo Falls, post card. ca. 1930
After the dream, I knew I had to go and stand with others who were standing against these mythical beasts. The sleeping dragon had awoken to the slithering black snake of the Dakota Access Pipeline. I packed my things and headed to Lakota country.
In Lakota prophecy, Zuzeca Sape is the black snake that comes into the land, breeding division and destruction in its path. I had heard this prophecy before from my Aunty Teri, who had learned much of the Lakota’s stories from her early activism with the American Indian Movement in the early 1970s. But only now were some of the meanings becoming apparent. Many tribes of People talked about the NoDAPL movement being Zuzeca Sape, and many People talked about their dreams.
Backwater Bridge, Cannonbal, ND, NoDapl, November 8, 2016, Photo by Author
“Get up! The Salmon need you!”
With the dream dancing in my head, we pulled into camp. Before us stood an encampment of so many others that had heard the call to show up and stand. We quickly set up our camp, got donations to their proper places, and made our way to the Sacred Fire of the Oceti Sakowin. I walked to the fire in the middle of a large circle of smiling faces, some with tears in their eyes—tears of joy and from the tear gas that had been poured upon the People with impunity. There was an Elder tending the Fire, his hand outstretched to mine as he handed me the tobacco to put into the flames. Our eyes locked, and as the tears began to pour down my thin face he said, “Welcome home, brother.” I prayed harder than I had ever prayed before as I walked clockwise around the Fire and put my offering into the thick smoke. The marriage of dream and prayer, complete in union.
I had still not eaten a full meal since my surgery a week prior, and the protein shakes I had brought were beginning to run out. I had a deep hunger that had not been fed since I became ill four years prior, a hunger that was ravenous and tired. We decided to head to one of the many soup kitchens serving food, and as we slowly made our way through the line, we talked to folks that had been in camp since the beginning of the NoDAPL resistance. There were Lakota cousins, Cherokee cousins, Blackfeet cousins, Navajo cousins, all the many tribes of Turtle Island in one place, sharing stories, laughing, and full of love. I was handed a plate by a Lummi Grandmother from the homelands who asked me if I had just arrived.
“Yes,” I said, “a few Cowlitz Cousins and I just pulled into camp a few hours ago.”
She hugged me with a stern grasp and whispered, “Welcome Cousin, we have Salmon from our homeland, please enjoy.”
My plates were filled by kind servers, all telling us, “Welcome, Mni Wiconi!” Generous portions of Salmon, huckleberries, and fry bread were laid upon our plates with love. We walked outside the serving tent and looked for a place to sit and found some Northwest Natives that had brought the fish for the People.
“Where is the Salmon from?” I asked one of the younger cousins.
“Oh, yeah, this Salmon came from the N’ch-iwana.” he replied in a thick rez accent.
“I believe most of this catch came from the Celilo Falls area.”
Les Brown photo. ©2012
“Get up! Stay Alert! The Salmon need you!”
Masi Coyote.
Mni Wiconi!
(This was originally published by Beyond the Margins, Oregon Humanities. All rights reserved by Author, Si Matta)
Drawing the cover for graphic novel project.
Drawing cover
Drafting first page.
Progress of first page.
ɬaxayam, from the GTS research team. Si & Bow
First page of text reads:
I wander here in dream, and relive the lore of old- slowly fading into calm waters of a once wild stream…
Many of us River People speak about still hearing those waters fall. Like a longing at the doors of our dreams..or a remembering we know in the beating of our hearts.
Amongst the joyful leaping of Salmon.
Up stream, Back home.
“Magic is afoot, God is alive.”- Buffy Sainte-Marie
Her dreams reassuringly whisper in journals made of leather. The engraved cover
gathering dust in the creases of her ancestors’ knot work; mythology and aesthetics that render
the heart through time. The company of rocks, feathers, and photos stand astute as altars to
memories through the halls of nostalgic flowers, dried and pressed.
A richly painted sunset grow’s silent in sleeping eyes, as if preparing herself for ritual,
she lays the journal on the tiered nightstand. The bond of dreams now past, yet ever present in
the great rites of a secret society. Curious shadows drape the night, and words fall from her
sleeping lips. Will those words find their place engraved in the leather bound journal of her
heart?
The delinquent voices sing the praise of night’s great sermon, ushered forth through pens
whose ink refuses to run dry. The extravagant want of knowing sits in a curious corner, the
holder of shadows, and fields of exhausted dreams. I wonder what she writes, as she scribes the
visions of a reluctant Sage? What great prophecy does the night entail in these pages lined with
words? What monsters lay slain at the feet of her Gods?
In the high noon of a winter’s day, when the light strains through the milky white
shutters, and the bustle of waking life dances the dance of routine, the old journal sits. What
silent conversations must happen in these churches of dust? Do the rocks tell stories about how
they were born of Volcano, and have lived to witness the anthropocene? Does the Phoenix
silently gather back their dormant flaming feathers? Do the flowers speak of their once great
pageantry, before being pressed and fitted into their eternal form? Does her father escape his
photographic prison to share stories of his daughter’s great feats? The totemic dragonfly lamp
stands guard atop its utilitarian box made mountain, draped in cloth and stone made coasters,
ready to sound the alarm of the creator; an ushering of quiet as not to give their animism away.
The tapping of the pens scribed great scripture, a drum that eternally beats in time with
her heart. A calligraphy of soul draped in esoteric symbols only meant for her sacred eyes; span
the enormity of dream, nightmare, and waking life. It tethers her to the divine, and unravels the
great inferno. There must be so much beneath those covers made of leather. Seas upon seas of
tear drenched papers brought from the clouds of grief and sadness, or the suns of joy and peace.
The stories of grandbabies and daughters whose hearts have hers, and blood pumps forth the
changing face of family. All these stories wrapped and tidy, made from the love of a well lived
life. All the stories where the beast is slain with great bravery and skill, as not to disturb her
loves from sleep. The holder of the flame, the Phoenix from the ashes; a journal.
“There’s a little black spot on the sun today..”- The Police
There was a time
when the clanking
of bones rattled
this old house.
Now dust collects,
like a yearning
for mars.
Given to
hysteria.
There is a mad glow
in the sky
tonight.
That’s my
soul up
there.
© Si Matta