What the Muses Leave Behind

Bring cash and coin, they make money easy at the casino. Jane Fonda could be there, Gary Farmer, Heidi HeitKamp. Spirits in the camp are good, it’s an ultra-stellar colony, Turtle Island, deep dreams of deep ecology. The local currency: breath and backbone. News from the front line: big storm forecast, so are miles and miles of cars. This narrative spirals inward, no second coming, see how the center holds. Morton County’s finest blocked the bridge on the Cannonball. they want to make the river a moat around their fortress, but today she stands with her rabble of heroes. Maybe we have seen nothing like this before; but defense of the seventh generation,  number one promise for a long, long time.

The day broke 10 degrees, iron-fisted. Parking lot isn’t talking, its striped asphalt skinned in dingy ice, arctic breezes pitch pins and needles at us. The blue tarp over the payload is stiff and cranky, I bang my knuckles tightening a line. Supposed to warm up to 25 today. This wind is pig-headed – wanahosni, some say here. I throw on another sweater. Another sip of coffee. Under my breath, I practice: Mni Wiconi, water is life We’re driving north, White Buffalo Calf Woman way, wondering how it is in winter camp. Will we be stopped and fined a thousand dollars? Water protectors already shouldered the perils, protecting a prayer is their resistance. Living legacy of indominable will - India to Morton County. State Route 14 is no prayer. It cuts through ribs of a sleeping prairie. We follow the wound, its welts of barbed wire and fence posts. My fingers clear a hole in the window fog. I mimic Sky woman peering into a new world, i