BLESSING FILLED WARRIORS
Believing the All Being was pleased, blessing filled warriors, determined to live, faithfully knew the All Being protected people of courage.
The warriors shaped and feathered arrows, prepared shields painted with holy symbols, bathed in a sacred lake, prayed for victory against an enemys advance.
On the high plains, they sat in a row, breechclouts and painted faces, a flutter of feathers adorning horse and rider, anticipating the coming horse soldiers.
The battle engaged betrayed them. It was the time of the ends beginning.
DANCERS
My tall father loved to dance. his six-foot four-inch frame, boney and leathered, spinning mother until her feet left the floor to fiddle shriek and banjo bang in my uncles polished hayloft. To watch was to witness pure joy, unadulterated as honey from a tree. Mother and I would sometimes dance sedately. I held her gently although I knew she was far from fragile. Father would sip his Seven-Up and grain alcohol, smiling at the joy in mothers eyes. We kept our distance, he and I, two men loving the same woman, delighting in her surrender to the music. We kept our distance, he and I and never danced a father-son waltz.
BEAVERS MEMORY
A beavers lodge interrupts the flow. The creek bends its way to find its course.
The slap of a beavers tail warns others a human is near, so they dive deep seeking safety.
It is not experience that informs them. It is memory. The trapping of ancestors
by Kit Carson and his men nestles deep in the psyche warning them to beware.
They know trappers did not come just to bath in hot springs, taste cold mountain air,
like tourists do today. Their memory traces fear felt in an empty lodge.
ASSASSIN
It is hard to understand why the boy, booted and spurred, horse by his side, sitting on a boulder in bright sunshine, thought it necessary to shoot the chipmunk.
Perhaps, it was because he had a rifle and felt an urge to display marksmanship. Or, perhaps an assassin slept in his heart, as it does in every human heart possessing
qualities necessary to kill at will, or for a fleeting thrill. The chipmunk provided neither food nor fur, The boy understood that before the kill. Today he prayed for forgiveness.
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