December 2016
Susan Deer Cloud
susandeer@gmail.com
susandeer@gmail.com
I am a mixed lineage Catskill Indian who currently divides her time between living in the mountains and roving in America and abroad. I call the Catskills the Manitou Mountains after the spirit and mists that pervade them, and I feel an affinity for their lingering panther presence. Even before I was sent off to school I understood that I had been born a dreamer, a poet and storyteller. An alumna of Binghamton University and Goddard College, over the years I have had countless poems, stories, and essays published in literary journals and anthologies. My most recent poetry books are Before Language, Hunger Moon and Fox Mountain, and my editing work includes the two-volume Native anthology I Was Indian (Before Being Indian Was Cool). I am the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, two New York State Foundation for the Arts Fellowships, and an Elizabeth George Foundation Grant, especially gratifying given some of the harder seasons in my life when I studied and created in poverty and solitude. https://sites.google.com/site/susandeercloud/
It Is There I Will Take You To
for Genevieve
It is there I will take you to …. places
only I know about, far from cities and politics ….
Catskill hideaways beneath evergreens
or hardwoods leafing out in dreamcatcher light.
It is May I shall take you to, after bare November
and deer season’s slain does and bucks, after
the holidays and mad buying and all of us
trying to have our nostalgia dinners
with family and jolly friends like the ones
on Christmas cards starred with glitter.
Long after the cold comes and snow
metastasizes across mountains
the same as cancer blows through the barrens
of your bones, I will bring you to where
the daffodils and hyacinths flame forth,
the forget-me-nots and spring beauties ….
and robins singing once more near mosses
soft enough to rest on in the reborn sun.
By then winter’s surgery, chemo and radiation
will be like faded memories of ice storms,
of pain and dark night prayers.
It is there to where spirits never die
I will lead you, where my ancestors lived
and had children and hope. I will show you
their graves and the way we still speak
to each other from our two worlds.
You will see where my ancestress
the medicine woman had her cabin
and drowned in Mongaup Creek.
In that valley we shall shed
our battered boots and dance
barefoot and beautiful again.
It Is There I Will Take You To
for Genevieve
It is there I will take you to …. places
only I know about, far from cities and politics ….
Catskill hideaways beneath evergreens
or hardwoods leafing out in dreamcatcher light.
It is May I shall take you to, after bare November
and deer season’s slain does and bucks, after
the holidays and mad buying and all of us
trying to have our nostalgia dinners
with family and jolly friends like the ones
on Christmas cards starred with glitter.
Long after the cold comes and snow
metastasizes across mountains
the same as cancer blows through the barrens
of your bones, I will bring you to where
the daffodils and hyacinths flame forth,
the forget-me-nots and spring beauties ….
and robins singing once more near mosses
soft enough to rest on in the reborn sun.
By then winter’s surgery, chemo and radiation
will be like faded memories of ice storms,
of pain and dark night prayers.
It is there to where spirits never die
I will lead you, where my ancestors lived
and had children and hope. I will show you
their graves and the way we still speak
to each other from our two worlds.
You will see where my ancestress
the medicine woman had her cabin
and drowned in Mongaup Creek.
In that valley we shall shed
our battered boots and dance
barefoot and beautiful again.
©2016 Susan Deer Cloud