July 2016
Susan Deer Cloud
susandeer@gmail.com
susandeer@gmail.com
I am a mixed lineage Catskill Mountain Indian who has returned to live in the mountains after many decades of living and traveling elsewhere. I call these the Manitou Mountains after the spirit and mists that pervade them, and I feel an affinity for the lingering panther presence here. I knew before I was sent off to school that I had been born a poet and storyteller, and over the years I have had countless poems and stories published in literary journals, anthologies, and books including my recent Hunger Moon and Fox Mountain. I have received such honors as a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and two New York State Foundation for the Arts Fellowships, especially gratifying given some of the harder seasons in my life when I created in poverty and solitude. https://sites.google.com/site/susandeercloud/
My mother, Dorothea May Lare (half Indian)
One Time
She walked out under the stars.
It was the Great Depression, she
ten. Her father
had dragged home
from building things
with brick and stone,
gone out again to gamble.
No one questioned
where he went at night
anymore than they mentioned
he was Indian. Her mother chanted,
“Joy of the streets, sorrow of the home.”
One time she tramped out
into a Catskill field,
lay among daisies and clover.
She thought
she could ignore hunger,
forget her father’s claim
their people were no different
than the extinct panthers.
One time she pressed close
to earth, stared up at the black
breathing past night’s compound eyes.
One time she heard a panther scream.
She walked out under the stars.
It was the Great Depression, she
ten. Her father
had dragged home
from building things
with brick and stone,
gone out again to gamble.
No one questioned
where he went at night
anymore than they mentioned
he was Indian. Her mother chanted,
“Joy of the streets, sorrow of the home.”
One time she tramped out
into a Catskill field,
lay among daisies and clover.
She thought
she could ignore hunger,
forget her father’s claim
their people were no different
than the extinct panthers.
One time she pressed close
to earth, stared up at the black
breathing past night’s compound eyes.
One time she heard a panther scream.
©2016 Susan Deer Cloud