Martin Luther King, Jr. Night
Especially silent night on city South Side
Could be any northern city in any anonymous dark
Unless they must trudge out
City dwellers burrowed far inside walls
Weather calls for snow and ice
Breeze jangles glass wind chimes
Behind lace curtains blinds shut
On lap Persian cat she and Korean lover got
Purrs slant of half-closed eyes
Glow of Silk Road Dreamtime
Remembering tales of women who lost
Their one true love
Wandering by midnight seas
Turning to stone and gorse on cliffs and heaths
Despite trailing skirt tangled hair
She doesn’t ramble except in heather heart
No train whistle keens up from river valley
Invisibly its old city shimmers lost galaxy
Along ice-jammed river
Snow shrouded earth buried memories
She and lover winging snow angels
Beneath violet sky astral snowfall
She thinks of storm approaching
Outside the blinds of outsiders like her
And January-born King skin deep night
Voice whirlwind of crystals
Dream blaze on hope’s mountaintop
All Earth’s snow angels rising up
Photography © Susan Deer Cloud
Susan Deer Cloud is a Catskill Mountain Indian. An alumna of Binghamton University and Goddard College, she has received a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship, New York State Foundation for the Arts Poetry Fellowships, and an Elizabeth George Foundation Grant. Her most recent book is Fox Mountain from FootHills Publishing. Her new collection, Hunger Moon, is forthcoming. The photos of the truck with the confederate flag were taken by Susan during Christmastime. “I would like to see every hater of those with darker skins,” she writes, “be required to do DNA testing so they could see who their first mother was and where she lived.”
Susan never disappoints.