Relevant Is Different Points on the Circle

to BWC

History
bless me with my children’s growing rebellion
with love in another tongue
teach me what my pride will not savor
like the fabled memory of elephants
I have loved them and watched over them
as the bird forgets but the trap doesn’t
and I shall be buried with the bones of an eagle
with a fierce detachment
and legends of the slain buffalo.

This is a country where other people live

When agate replaces dead wood
slowly the opal and bone become one.
A phoenix named Angela
nests in my children’s brain
already
the growing herds of bison unnoticed
are being hunted down the federal canyons
of Yellowstone Park.