White Buffalo will dance

PRAIRIE GRASS

That men invented the entire horoscope

looking up at the silken knots

of stars – their slow thoughts

tracing remote ellipses with a rope

on sand.  That the soul configures

these pantomimes of fate,

explaining (Bantu or Sanskrit)

why the king had to die, the princess

dance upon her own grave, once.

Ironies of the old men,

& that sybil-crone

left with her grieving remonstrance.

My mother painted an oil of early spring

in Hopkins, 1960s –

solitary white house

over brune & barren slopes, folding

down to Mirror Lake, a few leafless trees

& the soaring robin’s-egg sky

in its firmament of high

stratus (midwestern hopefulness).

With Virgo ascendant over his plantation

Washington will walk the garden,

taste the measureless serene –

the unfinished pyramid of the nation

soaked in honeydew tears of Evening Star.

Yet White Buffalo will dance

on prairie grass... her light

lance touch the forehead of the War.

12.23.18