Slow Smoke/Still-Day

STILL-DAY A Medicine-man

Mystic he was, more deep and passionless
Than a stagnant pond beneath a film of weeds;
But when the clouds went combering up the sky,
And Thunder-spirits, rumbling in the dusk,
Flickered their tongues of lightning ghastly green,
His withered lips would ripple with a prayer,
Like water-reeds before a gasp of wind.

Socketed deep among his bold bronzed features,
Worn dull from long communing with the ghosts
Of fish, of snakes, of moaning dead, his eyes
Held never a hint of evil; save in winter,
When bleak Kee-way-din, ghost-of-frozen-death,
Flung on a swirl of snow, from out a deep
Dark pocket of the night, a Great White Owl.
Ugh! Black-medicine! . . . beneath his lids
A stealthy soul would glint like any weasel
Gliding among the shadows in the rushes.

When Northern Lights came slipping from the cave
Of spirits in the land-of-winter-ice,
And lifted up a spectral hand to clutch
The shuddering stars—Hi-yáh! Dark Mystery!
Baleful and sinister the fleeting mood
That swept across his stoic countenance,
As when a black bat darts across the moon
And throws a flapping shadow on a pool.