Absentee Indians and Other Poems

letter, from one half mad writer to another

ietter,jrom one halfmad writer to another Jar Lorne Simon Poets, you said eating watermelon that hot July in Norman peel ?iJold skins. My mouth cracked at the corners and those useless layers dropped away with each word. Nothing, you said as you left for summer travel ever decays Jar the Poet. One stray image stays: The gallery yard filled with gnats and 500 Nations. And that tree where we leaned laughing in shadows, in shadows dusk handsome bark becomes Micmac. Only the skin, you said in your letters 90 from B.C. ifthings decays. Only the skin I repeat to myself as I trace your name in an ink scrawl, your presence in a signature. Poems, you wrote, draw memory like moon power pulls on the seas and creates tides. Now your voice calls back pulls from Skedeg'moochv-outi, the Road of the Spirits, the MilkyWay. Words scattered like breadcrumbs to find our way from madness home. Moon soft rhythms, The Poet's voice, I say, drawing water on a journey of memory where two half mad writers become one. And tide rises and tide falls away. ...