The painter’s face slips over the bridge edge,
floats a Minotaur maze of water rings.
What memories I have in this place—are none.
I borrow a painter’s reflections as mine.
“Yosemite” means “Those who kill” in Miwok
or “Enemy.” They held the valley.
Then come stories of Natives killed by settlers,
settlers killed by Native people in return.
The painter spells all their names in sky blue,
titanium white, crow-wing black.
Above, at valley edge, a true torrent hovers.
A false plunge repeats on river’s surface.
In the distance I cannot hear its one sound,
“Fall,” roared into infinite, unlit space.
Here on green banks lovers loll or are those prism-
flashes of trout, blood bleeding into current?
Infusion of emotion—that straight line to me—
is a layline where the moon becomes whole.
—
Denise Low, Kansas Poet Laureate 2007-09, is board member of Indigenous Nations Poets, former board president of AWP, and curator of “Indigenous Voices” for The 222 in northern California. She taught at Haskell Indian Nations University, where she founded the creative writing program. Her House of Grace, House of Blood (2024) is an archive/verse project (University of Arizona). Other publications are Deer/A-Wi (Mammoth), with Kim Shuck, and Turtle’s Beating Heart: Lenape Survival (University of Nebraska).
