Friday, May 29, 2015

Stefanie Bennett- A Poem


GHOST DANCE REVISITED 2015   
 
I do not chant of the usual baptismal offerings
That the sliding door
Of a nail-strewn heaven opens.
 
My esteem-hood is lodged in the fluttering
Red grass, gently calling. The misplaced
Braid of a bygone sister’s hair.
 
A Nation’s trivia thundered the Longhouse.
Only one transfixed hawk-claw
                                         - No crucifix,
Survives the trans-formationing   
 
... Red to white. Tribal paring means
Just that: Blindfolded octagons
Upon the kiss of daylight –.
 
It came, the triad dancing stone, guised 
                                      As the dream-walk.
A mask matching of years –.
A talisman returned as the star child.
 
Now, with thong flung about his spirit bed
My earth father stacks lunar hoops
Against the weathered standing-pole...
 
He sings the circle round – each quarter.
He sings the blue connecting flame.
He sings the ambered here-on-after.
 
I craft an armlet out of hawk-claw –.
A breastplate of whistling cloud –.
Already, the red grass is answering
 
And Chippewa shamans cross
Lightly over...
 
 
 
Stefanie Bennett has published several volumes of poetry and had poems appear with
Mad Swirl, Ink, Sweat and Tears, Message in A Bottle, Bijou Journal, Illya’s Honey, Shot
Glass Journal, Jellyfish Whispers, Twice Upon A Time and others. She has acted as a
publishing editor and worked with Arts Action for Peace. Of mixed ancestry [Italian/
Irish/Paugussett-Shawnee] she was born in Queensland, Australia in 1945.
 

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