MOLE'S BLUES / Jim Stevens
1
Each time the grass and the trees
Lift through voices of the forest way
Mole is coming up from the ground
Digging his roots and shadows of the hill
It was first a long time ago
Degahnyagaydi I was asking for help
You are our cousin, I am saying
Who knows the way of carrying earth
Each instant ~ Every turn
Wearing no eyes but the inner eye
2
It was last night, in another time
I watched the whirling dancers
Coming out of the leafy air
It was spoken to me
To carve words with a face of rock
To let Grandfather Flint roll the water
Into one tooth of a blue catamount
Returning this bad thing of the moment
To a place where even Mole
Could not find the unresting Spirit
3
And then there became
I remember, at the dance
The thousand dragonflies
Around the arbor
Who pierced the air crazy
They also were with Whirlwind
Souls of the blood-red mushroom
How they passed into the eye so quickly
Before we knew it, Sun was passing west
Across the pines who were not sleeping
4
Mole knows that Dragonfly is of Sky-World
Dragonfly knows that Mole is of Earth
Degahnyagaydi who wears the red branch
On his small broad back
The heavy footprints pressing down on him
Who knows how our path stays in the heart
In knowing sorrow the soft earth turns
For the true ocean of a drum-beat
____________________
There are two thoughts informing this poem. The one is of the Spirit of
Mole (Degahnyagaydi in Seneca), who lives through stories of many Native
American cultures. Mole knows where all the plants are, since he lives under
the surface of the Earth. So Mole is the finder and guardian of the sacred
herbs.
The second thought of the poem is in remembering the sight one afternoon
during grand entry of an Anishnabe powwow. Suddenly there were thousands
of dragonflies circling the dance-ground.
-- J.S.
____________________
Three Poems by Jim Stevens
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