Original Fire by Louise Erdrich Read Free Book Online Page A

afraid as we stood between the willows,
    as we shaped the standard words with our tongues.
    Then it was done. The scenery multiplied
    around us and we turned.
    We stared calmly from the pictures.

5 Penance
    I am sorry I ruined the oatmeal
    which must remain in the bowl. Sorry
    my breath hardened on the carpet and the slashed fur
    climbed, raving, off the wall.
    I am sorry for the ominous look, for using tears.
    Sorry for the print on the page,
    for wearing the shoes of a dead woman
    bought at a yard sale.
    She still walks, walks
    restlessly, treading the mill. I am
    sorry I could not lift out the stain
    with powerful enzymes, with spit, with vinegar.
    Sorry I pickled your underwear
    and froze my hands to the knob
    so that you had to turn me to gain entrance
    to the kingdom without spots or wrinkles.
    I am sorry I have failed so I am not allowed
    to leave the table, to which my knees are strapped.
    Sorry I cannot leave you behind. For you are mine.
    You are everything. And I am sorry.

6 Holy Orders
    God, I was not meant to be the isolate
    cry in this body.
    I was meant to have your tongue in my mouth.
     
    That is why I stand by your great plaster lips
    waiting for your voice to unfold from its dark slot.
     
    Your hand clenched in the shape of a bottle.
    Your mouth painted shut on the answer.
    Your eyes, two blue mirrors, in which I am perfectly denied.
     
    I open my mouth and I speak
    though it is only a thin sound, a leaf
    scraping on a leaf.

7 Extreme Unction
    When the blue steam stalls over the land
    and the resinous apples
    turn to mash, then to a cider whose thin
    twang shrivels the tongue,
    the snakes hatch
    twirling from the egg.
     
    In the shattered teacup, from the silvering
    boards of the barn,
    in the heat of rotting mulch hay,
    they soak up the particles of light
     
    so that all winter
    welded in the iron sheath
    of sludge under the pond
    they continue, as we do,
    drawing closer to the source,
    their hearts beating slower
    as the days narrow
    until there is this one pale aperture
    and the tail sliding through
     
    then the systole, the blackness of heaven.

The Seven Sleepers
    Seven Christian youths of Ephesus, according to legend, hid themselves in a cave in A . D . 250 to escape persecution for their faith. They fell asleep in the cave, their youthfulness was miraculously preserved, and they were discovered by accident some two hundred years later. The Seven Sleepers are the patron saints of insomniacs.
     
    Wandering without sleep I looked for God
    and found this moment to praise.
     
    Come with me, impossible night.
    I am moving bitterly and far away.
    Over vast and open country pulsing with dead light,
    over the atomic voids
    onto the great plains in massed vapor
    in the tumble fever of my dreams,
    I seek you,
    Nameless one. My god, my leaf.
     
    I seek you in the candles of pine and in the long tongue
    furled in sleep. I seek you in the August suspension
    of leaves as steps of sunlight
    tottering through air.
    Drunk beneath the overpass at dawn
    passed out in a Hefty bag.
    On the hills, the tyrant moon,
    and in the faces of my daughters,
    I seek you driving prayerfully
    as a member of the Sacred Heart Driving Club.
    I seek you in the headless black wings of the vulture
    Motionless dial, my death.
     
    I seek you full of me, as if I could drink you in
    and overcome myself.
    I seek you under everything
    in parallel faults and shifting plates.
    Deadened to myself in the morning
    and in the flat thumb of day
    I seek you balancing the hammer.
    I seek you naked, holding red stones,
    as I walk beneath the torn sky, toward home,
    where I open my throat to the black river
    of my fears, all my fears.
    You are faceless in the twig cells dividing upward.
    Always to the light.
    You lie buried with me twenty days and nights
    without a candle, breathing through a straw
    and the air is sweet, clear, like food.
    From our grave, we can smell the leaves and water,
    taste sunlight, taste the chemical structure of