Poem: Overlord's Prayer

whom you take the child out of by days

and generations

with the braided horse-tailed lash

of your whip and voice?

The remnants of slave songs

that have found their way

here to me

sing

the dippered north

north: a mecca to pray toward

north: the direction of heaven.

It is this, not you

Our Father, Overlord

that interests me.

It is the women who sung this secret

that could not be sold away from them

to their daughters and sons,

sung the celestine road into history.

And what of the daughter who walked it:

followed the drinking gourd, walking

the familiar road to sleep, travelling

alone and by starlight, trusting

the dun-fleshed night to color her gone?

How did that map of heaven appear to her

knowing nothing of the greeks who named constellations,

like Orion, in endless patterns of pursuit?

Not knowing that the Norse once believed

the white sun she eluded

and the moon that lit her way

were chased across the sky by wolves

uncaptured, could never find

a safe place to stop?

Following their bearish light,

does she walk in sleep

and find herself

in flight among them, dreaming

the bright and distant freedom of stars?