by Laura Rodley
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| Abenaki Indian Pictures. Abenaki Children. Image source: Indians Pictures. |
In the back edge of the forest
are stones piled up one on top the other
in a horseshoe shape facing
the quartz vein outcropping
perhaps built by Abenaki Indians
before colonial men sent their servants
to take stones from Indian burial mounds
to build their stone fences,
unknowingly disturbing the peace,
and here my husband and another
man named Jim lift beds of moss
off the stone structure, reveal it
to be as tall as a horse, facing the sky,
the midnight sky when the Big Dipper
hangs low and this is what my eyes
feasted on before the election,
how it is time for the Indian spirits
to walk our land, to look
to the Big Dipper and the old spirits
caught in her cup
for our answers, for forgiveness.
Laura Rodley’s New Verse News poem “Resurrection” has won a Pushcart Prize and appears in The Pushcart Prlze XXXVII: Best of the Small Presses (2013 edition). She was nominated twice before for the Prize as well as for Best of the Net. Her chapbook Rappelling Blue Light, a Mass Book Award nominee, won honorable mention for the New England Poetry Society Jean Pedrick Award. Her second chapbook Your Left Front Wheel is Coming Loose was also nominated for a Mass Book Award and a L.L.Winship/Penn New England Award. Both were published by Finishing Line Press. Co-curator of the Collected Poets Series, she teaches creative writing and works as contributing writer and photographer for the Daily Hampshire Gazette. She edited As You Write It, A Franklin County Anthology, Volume I and Volume II.
