This is Michael Carey for Voices from the Prairie a weekly sampling from the rich soil of Iowa’s literary tradition. Today’s poem is "In the Tree’s Shadow" by Ray A. Young Bear of the Meskwaki settlement near Tama. In this lovely poem Ray Young Bear a modern American and a member of an ancient Native American tribe seems to live in two worlds at once: one concerned with seeding and clearing land with the aid of modern machines and one with an natural animistic sensibility to the divine spirit all around.
My dog is as old as my bereavement.
The wooden red wagon dissolves
into the mossy ground. "Madnesse."
A one-cloud rain. Like wild architects
we seed the rough hill with grass.
By machine and wind, trees have fallen.
In the tree’s shadow an orange
light
holds the sunset’s color. I don’t question
this Animistic reaching. Of the growth
on the bark that shines.
"In the Tree’s Shadow" by Ray A. Young Bear from the book The Rock Island Hiking Club published by the University of Iowa Press.
For Voices from the Prairie and Humanities Iowa, this is Michael Carey
hoping you continue to hear the music blooming all around you.
Biography
Ray Anthony Young Bear was born in Iowa in 1950 and grew up at the Meskwaki Tribal Settlement. His poetry has been influenced by his maternal grandmother Ada Kapayou Old Bear and his wife, Stella L. Young Bear. Young Bear attended Claremont College in California, as well as Grinnell, University of Iowa, Iowa State and Northern Iowa. He has been a visiting faculty member at Eastern Washington University and the University of Iowa. Young Bear and his wife co-founded the Woodland Song and Dance Troupe of Arts Midwest in 1983. Young Bear's group has performed traditional Meskwaki music in this country and the Netherlands.