Mantis
                               for Dale Patterson


Green spar from wing armor glitters
Against blued sunshine
As, swaying in defiance of wind,
Your jade pinhole eye pricks from scene to scene,
Discerning softly.

Your solitary majesty makes
cowards out of wasps;
Undecorated dance haunts even
The modern-day aesthete of steel-shot eye,
Inspiring softly.

Turn green mist from transient scourge
And settle abroad,
Your slowness defying the world--
The proudest king lone, no pomp, no tumult;
Reigning softly.





At Wounded Knee


The bumblebee at wounded knee
Decants his nectar lazily
Yellow lines dance into black
And when we dream we hear the crack
And when we dream we see the flash
We shake from cold, we smell the ash
Our houses like the honeycomb
Dissolve when wintering creatures roam
Our houses like the buried bones
Rattle as the blizzard groans
In creature dreams our houses settle
Underground and lie quiet
The whip-poor-will heard at the hill
Calls to the friends and dancers still
The bull who rests at wounded knee
Tips nectar to the bumblebee
Menagerie at wounded knee
Sits shivered from the landed free.





Threat of Never


There’s a cantilever where my brain
Projects my bone-bred powers, where the free truss
Droops in the stroke sign of a half-visage frown,
A buckling of will that throws initiative
From its dive board, that shakes away the verb
Leaving behind stuffed promise of the noun.
No freedom in my late break from expression
No sweetness in the now I lay me down.

I'm wary of the advent of the flag:
I worry nation covets my potential,
Wants the whole heroic trade for its renown;
Without the hot wax seal of institution,
Absent creamed decadence or wartime bugles,
Is my life-line tail no longer than my spawn?
No way I’ll trust my name to annalists;
No sweetness in the now I lay me down.

Where’s the precedent for these intentions,
And is there time enough ahead in life
To spur on with illusion of a crown?
How natural, surrendering to the slack!
Our dream song echoes in unfathomed spirit,
Till human voices wake us: "Time to drown!"
My seed shrinks from some fallow epitaph.
No sweetness in the now I lay me down.