Duane Niatum

ODE TO WANDERING POETS

We fall silent in this plague showing

no mercy as it kills and kills.

There is little assurance knowing it

has no brain yet seems aware somehow

it’s the new gamekeeper in our lives.

We turn to silence and turn off the news

there are viruses on the march

delighted to beat us up at what

we call the warfront with a sense

of joy at the wreckage they create.

The future has a black cloud tail

hanging over us and a wind ready

to bite our skin and break into laughs.

Our feet stumble and we almost trip

as the road slips away like jelly in a heat wave.

With a wind last night that knocked down trees

we are reminded climate plays a part in this picture.

We look left and right and watch for an exit

from the storm and imagine we can learn

from failures now as high as a skyscraper.

The edge we walk on burns like Dante’s flames.

WAR ON CHILDREN

I step through the hazards of thought

as if they were booby traps.

The day, as common as a political bedbug,

steps high and kicks like a warlord.

This warlord stomps our path with death crumbs;

the parade disfigures any romance left to memory.

I resist the flames of hell wrinkling my cheek

and imagine my love fighting to rid the bitterness.

ICE troopers pound boots across the United States;

immigrant children eat only the tiredness of innocence.

Troopers laugh as the children are truck loaded

to a filthy prison with bars and fences to the moon.

The cruelty and heartlessness fly in their faces

like a flag in a rural sagebrush funk of Texas.

I witness this moment on TV;

it hits and batters my head like a bowling ball.

Duane Niatum, Jamestown S’Klallam tribe, has been writing poems, stories and essays for over 60 years.  He’s published 10 books of poems, Sea Changes is the latest. The legends and traditions of his ancestors help shape and animate his poetry.  Duane has made a life-long study of European and American Indian art, literature and culture.