An Old Story

Way down below near the cave of our beginning
there’s an old woman in buckskin cooking corn stew.
Her face is an oak burl & the stars & moon
follow the motion of her stirring stick.
Her shawl swaying north to south along the Milky Way
moves the four winds.
For ten thousand years shunka sapa
has studied her every move.
The trickster dog keeps the world spinning,
plucks a porcupine quill from the blanket she sews
& hides it under the rug each time
she limps to the fire to stir the pot.

When she finishes the quillwork the world will end.

We all meet this old woman when we die.
She will offer a ladle of hot corn stew--
at that moment you’re supposed to know
what to do, have prepared for it all your life.
Of course you’re hungry!
She smiles & the stew smells good.
Friend, throw it over your shoulder!
This is what they say to do.

That old dog needs to eat.












Clint Frakes was recently selected by Mark Strand as one of the 50 Best New Poets of 2008 for an anthology of the same title. In 2006 he received the James Vaughan and the Peggy Ferris Memorial awards for Poetry. He is a graduate of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at the Naropa Institute and the Northern Arizona University writing programs. He received his Ph.D. with emphasis in Creative Writing from the University of Hawaii in 2006 and is currently working on his second full book of poetry, entitled Citizen Poems. He has appeared in over fifty journals since 1987 with recent work appearing in Bamboo Ridge, Hawaii Pacific Review, Tinfish and Pemmican. He is the former chief editor of Hawaii Review and Big Rain, currently working as a free lance writer and editor in Sedona, AZ.






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