Seeing in the Dark

By RON WELBURN

for Francis Martin (Nauset/Nipmuc)

 

Blind at night in the forest,

you are right about fear and

what it does to you there,

how fluids and adrenaline fix the eyes

on what the mind cannot accept.

 

And this explains it all:

How when they came here

the thick forests unnerved them,

How they couldn’t find each other

in the pursuit of some theory of white.

 

How is it that grandmother moon’s face

is impenetrable, disembodied, inchoate

in spite of narratives launched bedeviled by poetics.

How they started a legacy against trees and brown people.

 

And you are right again about that fear,

right as rain and morning and frost on

the pumpkin waiting in the dark.

For why should we fear when we are

the bear, the fisher, deer and vole?

 

Even the owl is of our community.

 

Ron Welburn (Gingaskin Cherokee and Assateague descendant) has published in over one hundred literary magazines and anthologies, such as volumes I and II of Susan Deer Cloud’s I Was Indian compilations, Yellow Medicine Review, Callaloo, and The Best American Poetry 1996. His seventh collection of poems, Council Decisions: Revised and Expanded Edition, was published by Bowman Books of the Greenfield Review Press. A professor in the English department at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, he formerly directed the American Studies graduate concentration and also coestablished the Certificate Program in Native American Indian Studies in 1997.

[Purchase your copy of Issue 06 here]

Seeing in the Dark

Related Posts

The parthenon in Nashville

March 2024 Poetry Feature: New Poems by Our Contributors

MATT DONOVAN
On my flight to Nashville, after / telling me the Parthenon in his town was far better / than the one in Greece, the guy seated beside me / in the exit row swore that Athena was an absolute / can’t-miss must-see. Her eyes will see into your soul, / he said, no goddamn joke.

picture of a bible opened up

February 2024 Poetry Feature

CORTNEY LAMAR CHARLESTON
There was tear gas deployed without a tear. There were / rubber bullets fired from weapons that also fire lethal rounds. There were / armored vehicles steering through the streets of the capital that stars our maps. // What we saw was only new to the people it was new to.

Headshot of Anne Pierson Wiese

Sharp Shadows

ANNE PIERSON WIESE
On our kitchen wall at a certain time / of year appeared what we called the sharp / shadows. / A slant of western light found / its way through the brown moult of fire / escape hanging on to our Brooklyn rental / building for dear life and etched replicas / of everything