Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE WOMAN FROM SPIRITWOOD, by JAMES HARRISON


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE WOMAN FROM SPIRITWOOD, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: Sleeping from mandan to jamestown
Last Line: Before there can be freedom.
Alternate Author Name(s): Harrison, Jim
Subject(s): Beauty; Native Americans; West (u.s.); Indians Of America; American Indians; Indians Of South America; Southwest; Pacific States


Sleeping from Mandan to Jamestown,
waking near Spiritwood in the van,
shrinking in fever with the van
buffeted by wind so that it shudders,
the wind maybe fifty knots straight N by NW
out of Saskatchewan. Stopping for gas we see men
at the picnic tables cleaning the geese they've shot:
October first with the feathers carried off by the wind
into fields where buffalo once roamed, also
the Ogalala & Miniconjou Sioux roamed in search
of buffalo and Crazy Horse on a horse that outlived him.
She comes out of the station, smiling, leaning into the wind.
She is so beautiful than an invisible hand reaches
into your rib cage and twists your heart one notch
counterclockwise. There is nowhere to go.
I've been everywhere and there's nowhere to go.
The talk is halting, slow until it becomes
the end of another part of the future.
I scratch gravel toward and from this wound,
seeing within the shadow that this shadow casts
how freedom must be there
before there can be freedom.





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