Sacred Ground

To Raven, To Raven
He sings his songs,
His calls are short,
But they do last long,
To Crow his brother,
Who flies the valley below,
High above the antelope,
And the plains Buffalo.

Doves flutter among the brush,
As does the wren and thrust,
Living off the bounty of insects,
That arive with the evening winds,
High above the peaks,
The peregrin takes flight,
Among the hilltops,
The Raven songs unflur,
While in the valley below,
Resides the Crow.

Along with the wren and thrust,
The doves flutter in the brush,
There in the evening dusk,
This is their home,
This is their sacred ground.


To watch Hank Real Bird deliver his poetry, a native of verse, is to watch the birds dance upon the ground...Rambin Jack and I were awaitin, trying to get into the room to hear Hank read,
and Hank passed us, and Jack with the tip of his hat, greeted Hank...Hank replied that he was not Hank...Jack managed to get in before me, and eventually I did get in, and was able to watch and hear Hank verse as it flew like a crow through the air...that night, in the "Upper Room", I saw Hank and approached him...I asked Hank who was that man across from him, he introduced him as his brother Henry...the trickers...the coyote...the crow brothers...Hank is the poet...Henry is the artist...and to have these two brothers play that coyote tricker on ole Jack was an opportune not to be missed...and I was caught in their trap as well...I spotted two Ravens one afternoon on the ground and thus came this piece...bless the crow and his brother....

SCARLET AND PURPLE

They rode for they were this nations rounders,

Across the plains of Kansas

And along the Tejas Llano,

And in the wake of their dust,

Bordellos rose up like violets and roses,

Aside those rounder trails,

Colors of scarlet and purple,
Of blood and passion,
Heat and rain,
Filled the upper rooms,
Trail dust like winters snow,
Fell from the brims,
That hid their young brows,
And from their legs,
Removed torn deerskin and yellowdog chaps,
Scarred by mesquite and barb,
Leaving youth and innocence,
Exposed in rooms of scarlet and purple...

They mounted and rode through the night,
Herders gathering around a campfire light,
For they were this nations rounders,
Driving steers through rabbits,
And herds of the majestic buffalo,
And past tee-pees that graced the plains,
Young men whose youth fled,
And whose bodies harden as steel,
And as time fled became tired,
With rope burnt hands,
Fingers wrapped in pain,
That good Irish whiskey could not end,
For they were the youth,
Rounders for the nation,
There upon Kansas plains,
And the Llano of Tejas,
Whose pain was comforted,
In rooms of scarlet and purple.



One of the real few that I have admired in my life, was the late great George Smith of Sebastopol, who built a turn of the centuryactual town behind his house, in his apple orchard; having acquired set design skills from working on sets in/for Hollywood as a young man, and his last project on this GeorgeTown... in our last visit together...discussed his final project...was the corner bar and bordello upstairs....he both became in later years a Sonoma County Fair Director...I trust that it was not he that took all of Willies Tickets which caused Willie to tell the Fair Board c.1976--- to take the Fair and shove it...but greatly as well, created a most beautiful campus at SSU, taking a bare piece of seed field and landscaped it beyond belief...