I don't know if you make me more myself or less.

You make me less of the self I always knew,

But I'm not like this with anyone but you,

(And that's the part you may not understand.)

So maybe this is me,

And I could never see myself before.

I never knew what I was really capable of,

What I could really do,

With flowers in my hair and a zany grin .

Like Myrtle Crenshaw, driving again after all these years,

I, too, found second gear,

And there really is a whole new world out here.

-jenn

Medicine Man showed up

In my dream

To give me a rust colored leather satchel.

It was made of soft sturdy elk hide

And had a nice long shoulder strap.

"It's beautiful," I said.

I pulled it to my face to smell it.

I nuzzled the felty side of it.

It felt like a horse's nose.

"I love it," I said. "Thank you."

My eyes met his and we stared into one another

For one rare moment

Before he looked down at the satchel and said,

"There are gifts inside,"

And then he turned, as swiftly and out of nowhere

As he had appeared, and like an eddy of leaves

In a swirling fall wind, he mounted his Appaloosa

Bareback, and pulled her around by the mane

And trotted off and disappeared 

Between the trees by the creekbend.

I hurried to unlatch both the buckles

To see the gifts inside the satchel.

But there was only a large piece 

Of thin, yellowed parchment rolled up in there.

And when I unrolled it, I could see

Four names written down in bold waxy black,

And one of them was mine.

--------

Medicine Man comes to take me with him.

He says I am running circles,

Like a caged animal or one that is injured.

He takes his finger and draws an arrow in the sand.

"Come with me and I will heal you,"

The Medicine Man says softly

And offers me his hand.

It's the first time I've ever touched him,

Even in my dreams,

But I reach out and take his hand like the child I am.

And now I know 

That he is real.

And I am going with him

As far as he will go with me.

-----

Medicine Man led me to the woods

And held my hand all along the way.

We followed a deer path to a creek,

And I could see that it was magic.

We followed down, walking along the bank,

And sometimes splashing through the water,

Until we came to a clearing,

And just beyond that,

The place where several creeks gathered

Into a clear lake.

Medicine Man dropped my hand

And began to take his clothing off.

It was like something that he had to do.

He started down to the waters edge,

Then turned, and told me to take my clothes off, too,

And come and join him

In the Pool of the Great Spirit's Tears.

-------

I felt a deep urge to join the Medicine Man.

I felt an undeniable urge

To strip naked and go and dip myself

In this great lake that he called

"The Pool of the Great Spirit'sTears."

I took all my clothing off

And walked down to the silver edge

Of the shining waters.

I stepped in and felt a thrilling tingle

Take hold of my toes.

A sweet grip caught my foot and ankle.

I went in deeper,

And the tingle continued up my leg.

I plunged in,

Diving all the way up under the water, head first,

And felt an electric sensation 

Pulsing thru my core

To every vein and corpuscle 

While every synapse of my brain

Fired all at once with quickness and renewal.

I came up for air and heard the Medicine Man's deep laughter.

"I see you like the healing powers

Of the waters here!"

We swam like otters together for a long time,

There in the shining waters,

And finally emerged, dripping wet

Back up on the beach's sand.

"Every hurt is caused by virus,"

The Medicine Man told me,

"And even aging is caused by viruses.

This water cures every sickness,

Every hurt, every virus that has ever existed.

The loving, living waters here are filled with silver and with eternal love,

And many other minerals and life giving principals.

This is the ancient spring they used to call the fountain of youth.

Many have searched for it

But it is hard to find."

The Medicine Man looked deep into my eyes, into my heart.

He smiled.

"You were ready for the healing waters, weren't you?

I know you felt the goodness and the love right away,

And you did not hesitate to immerse yourself.

That makes me happy," he said.

"It makes me happy, too," I mused.

-jenn

This is the part of the walk that I've waited for.

I round that penultimate corner,

And the sun shines sweetly onto my face,

Not too hot, and not too cold.

It's just slightly uphill three-quarters of the way now, 
Around the bend,

And then I will turn my back on the sun

And descend to my little rock house

On the leeward side of the hill.

My sheep will greet me and my lamb,

And I won't give a thought to who I am.

Mary, Bo-peep or Goldilocks,
I have no name,

So it's all the same to me.

-jenn 

I wanted to name my little horse "Bareback,"

Because it was a name I'd heard 

Associated with horses handed down

Through several generations.

"I'll ride Bareback," Gramp would say,

And often after that, he'd talk about 

How his mother rode "Bareback" all the time,

And what a rider she had been.

But he didn't tell this memory

Because he'd seen her,

For she died when he was only four,

But those, and other few sparse stories

Were handed down to him.

My dad insists I ride with a saddle,

And when he has time,

He saddles her for me.

I am only seven now and cannot hoist it by myself.

He chuckles at the irony 

Of calling out to Bareback

To come be saddled.

But Dad doesn't know how much I ride her

During the day while he is gone.

I jump on her without a saddle,

Without a bit or bridle or reins,

And many times I think about my great great grandmother,

And her horse, of the same name,

Bareback.

-jenn 

Still in the summer house, late autumn,

The Cherokee women chop ripe apples

For what the English call "a pie."

But in this version, the original human being women

Will make a crust from corn flour

And eat it with bean ball.

Some of the women have been sick

And did not come to help make pie.

Some think the sickness is caused by eating the white man's food.

Some say it is from wearing the white man's clothes,

With all their brightly colored dyes,

"And now Katooyah tested positive for gold," an incredulous woman says.

One big homely woman can't believe it!

"What does that even mean she asks?"

'It means she has gotten herself engaged to a white man," the other woman explains.

-jenn 

I left a little girl out on the trail,

Like a college kid who without consideration 

Takes on a dog, only to wind up

Leaving it back home with the parents.

I thought I could retrace the steps of my ancestors

All the way from Alabama to Talequa.

I tried to tell the story, but couldn't finish the job.

And people wanted to know!

They asked me, "What happened to the little Indian girl?"

But I couldn't bring myself to tell them

That her mother died out there,

And the people who took her in abused her.

They molested that little girl,

And she ran away and married a soldier.

She changed her name

And never spoke a word of Cherokee again,

In fact, she hardly ever said a word of any kind again, at all.

I tried to tell her story for her, but I failed.

I found the forced march much too much for me.

Sometimes my heart flies along the path they took

And gets lost out there.

Sometimes when I go, I get molested out there, too, by demons,

And sometimes, I die, just like the little girl's mother.

-jenn

I drive past the cemetery on the way to the country club.

The grass is still so green

Even though it's mid-October,

And suddenly I'm awash with a feeling of futility.

A gentle rain falls on my windshield,

And I don't bother to turn the wipers on.

I let the drops pool and gather and run down,

Just as my tears are now dropping down off my jaw-line.

A few have gone beyond my bare neck,

And one big one runs down into my bra

And between my breasts

Where it gets caught and wicked into the stay-dry elastic band.

It sighs its last moments away

Quoting scripture,

"Vanity, vanity, all is vanity."

-jenn