I am the drum
and under the summer sun,
my skin scalding your fingers,
I wonder how far we've really come.

We are still confused in love;
your touch, like the sage soaked wind,
stings my eyes but still proves
to widen them.

The dancers in the circle
become the music. The scores of bright
feathers and the muted tone
of buckskin are legends

telling the story of my ancestors
who sat around a fire, eating heaps
of plump blackberries, suckling
their children and petting their wolves.

The wailing of the singers
means something, and I can't breathe in
enough of the air, enough of the same
smells, or fill my body with enough corn

to bring me back to the woods by a river
where I can lie in the grass,
pluck lilies from the water,
and ask the fish why my heart is burning.