Sharp Shinned Hawk
Poems by Roger Dunsmore ©1987
Title poem nominated for a Pushcart Prize by the Koyukon writer, the late Mary Tallmountain.
Published by Blackberry Books Nobleboro, Maine, 1987 chapbook.
THE SHARP-SHINNED HAWK
(for Leonard Crow Dog)
I
The sharp-shinned hawk
dips into the dried grasses
sits awhile,
lifts off,
twists back down,
wing-flutter motion,
tail spread,
tail flutter too,
veers off
gliding the field
dips down,
flutter wings
flutter tail
speckled-light-flicker
suspended in no wind,
many times the field.
Already we have seen the mountain bluebirds,
the orange-cloaked maybe oriole
(fence post to ground to fence post),
already the white-tailed deer
flashing in timber
and orange fungus-cup, jelly-like on a stick.
Now this hawk,
these quick turns of tail, wing, neck,
this want inside the body:
dance the sharp-shinned
hawk
in your feathered cloak
one whole night.
Come inside our body.
II
When the medicine man speaks at the university
they find him incoherent.
He moves cleanly as a sharp-shinned
hawk in a spring field.
He talks of studying late-night,
feathers or rock.
He tells of the clown-stone
cold as a blizzard
all through his body.
Only three of them dared
touch it in the open palm
of the sacred clown.
(The way his wrists move,
the way his body pulls the bow,
that time he turned while speaking
and tested the soft, foam-board walls,
gently pushing against their smoothness
the way the sharp-shinned hawk
turned in the field.)
There are coherences of the mind,
the body,
coherences of the breath or lips,
way out beyond this English,
this talk with which we jam our hearts.
The philosophy professor makes fun
of the sharp-shinned hawk.
He does not believe a man's mind
can move like that--
like feathers
or spider webs,
coherent as winter grass.
III
They phone the Dean,
to tell me,
before I introduce him again,
"Be sure and say
he's never been to school
so he won't reinforce
old stereotypes."
They are afraid
his hawk-dance English
gives Indians a bad name.
Let go of your left-brain,
logic-chop, mind-excuse.
This is no de-clawed Kodiak bear,
muzzled,
wrestling would-be men
at the Trading Post Saloon,
a Pepsi Cola for a pin.
They give instructions to remove
the claws of the bear
with their pinchers,
their tweezers of the mind.
They are afraid of the sharp-shinned beauty
dancing the bones
of the man
in the lecture hall.
There are coherence of the wrist,
the lips,
coherences of the breath
(hawk feathers and dried grasses)
far out beyond this English,
this five thousand years,
with which we jam our minds.