In My First Visit
to the Mohawk Reservation
(Letter
to Ernesto Cardenal)
And
the first image for my poem
I write down right away
one Mohawk in
his fifties on
his sparkling
blue motorcycle
and this Mohawk artist in sun-glasses and
a collar with
a little turtle
who sung Mohawk songs at Woodstock 94
The usual wooden houses from northeastern New York
and blue red
green high speed
barges in the
backyard
And in a matter of seconds everything went awkward
-really-
I felt like I was in a foreign house but just like my
own
A brown universe in miniature in northeastern New
York
even though Bruce isn't brown
and he doesn't to my eyes look Mohawk
but he is Mohawk
Bruce speaking to us visitors at the reservation
library
And the
passports on the CBS video
Onondagas from New York travel everywhere with
'cause
the Onondaga nation
is not part of the
United States: it's
Onondaga territory for real