To My Crowd

Poetry

“Crowd” is a term I learned from my Sámi mentor. Each of us has a Crowd, he taught, a tribe of spirits who follow our lives with interest, ready to assist if we are willing to look for the evidence of their work.

To the mischievous angels of my days, you know who you are.

In the unspace between

the particles I commonly inhabit

resides a busy crowd

of others.

Their world is understood

by the red hawk on a wire

who crosses my path

when I remember.

Glistening

white-capped mushrooms

pushing the soil

in a feral corner

of my garden know them,

as does the child

who closes her eyes

and frees the dove

of imagination.

My eyes are too open to see

them, but in a blanket of fog

or a fog of sleep the sight returns,

and in the heady blackbrown

bliss of fresh turned ground

or fresh ground coffee

I often catch them grinning:

A dead friend.

A frost-haired shaman.

A forgotten poet.

Spirit of a prairie wolf.

A life I lived once.

A sable cat who rolls

in the legendary ambrosia

of the trees. My Crowd

appears when I am not looking,

speaks when I am not listening,

reminds me of the other ways

to pay attention:

A stag in the oaks

gifts me his antlered head

intact under the decomposing leaves

and whispers, For your kindness to the deer.

---

Photo by Camilla Wells Paynter

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