Oxheheom- Maiyunahu'ta- which is the Danct for the who are guardian spirits. Spirit Who Renewal of Life Told Me In Sleep Wake up early and reach out and Settled Tap the air; Into the shoulder of Pyramid Peak, You can hear it ring. Looking, Hawk's early hunting cry Glances off the lake, the only trails here are Carries you against far cliffs and the ones you've left Drifting . . . circling ... behind you Back again. After supper sun setting Over ridges and ranges- Draughts of pine steeped Horizons away- Spring water needles; Last warmth soaking Deep bites of morning Into highline tangles, Bracing against any soft waking In the smoke. Wind twisted timber, gnarled, bent; Fingers Of an old god's folded hands. t Along EkutsihimnViy o by Jim Ofelt Ekutsihimmiyo is the flanging road in the sky - embodied as the Milky Way — it spans the space from earth to the Heammaioihio - the Cheyenne's concept of home after death. Ekutsihimmiyo is the road the spirit travels upon being freed from the body. Tasoom- which means the essence I saw, I thought Is it an eagle's nest? And went to look, and found. Buckskin wrapped and lashed into brand ?s. Armored with age, beyond armor, Beads and fine horn bow, Favorite horse's bones beneath. All these years the ravens and jays Still .adn't got through to the eyes. Later, back down Out of the mountains I wondered what they'd think Of him, of his dust, Those museum officials in Laramie And drove home quiet, Laughing- What would he think of them? Footlog Bark lost, Greasy from spray, Spans a meltwater Flood; Within the loud rush Grind boulder Teeth. Crossing, Premeditation done, Dignity back below Along Ekutsihimmiyo- In the car With my books, which is the Hanging Road From Earth To Sky Embrace the slippery Whore And belly-squirm. She came down the trail with another Party as I was going up. Young doe. All legs and eyes and Quick flash Mountain mornings in her smile. Meeting at Washakie crossing we Shared trail crackers and talk. Fed a Rocky Mountain jay. Watched three trout in the stream. And then. Rested, She turned and started down again and, Rested. I turned and headed on up. photography/Kirby Milton The screen door slipped from Carrie's hand and milleniums from now would find her and tell the She saw a road all rutted and muddy from the slammed against the sleeping silence of the world how it was back then. She thought of Lisa spring thaw. And woods much like the one she house. Throbbing against the wooden shell of the who was with her DNA all coded and was in. Then a cabin. A one ready, but - room, tarpaper (Jay ancestry. Throbbing against her temples, a forbidden. Forbidden to speak or write her shack. Of course, the old man on Hunter Road! nerve vibrated and vibrated and then stopped name. She edged her leg over the side of the bed. He was one of Jay's first calls as a young country abruptly. She listened. No one called to her from At least she could still move. She threw back the doctor. 'She pictured Jay stooping his six-foot within — Mother and Father up from Boston — covers like shale. Sandstone and quartz she heaped frame to enter. The stagnant air son home from college. She stood outside their clings to the at the foot. She picked her way through the unpainted plank floor and walls. The bed deep breathing. She could have gone in and with rubble of rock to the window and pulled the dominates the end of the room. Its dirty guilt a word or a touch peeled away their cocoon of drape. When she opened the window she felt the half hides the slop jar beneath. The old man is sleep and brought them with her. cold air press her back into the warmth behind sitting on the rocker he proudly tells Jay he Instead, she turned and started across the field her. She could see across the field to the wall of made with some barrel staves. His feet are alone. She looked gratefully at the full moon and evergreen, birch and jack pine. There her eyes planted on the box he kept beside the stove for then apprehensively across the field to the trees. were denied entrance. Even in the sunlight the wood. He eyes Jay suspiciously. Says he was In the morning, she thought, she would tell woods kept its secrets. "The trees are never to a doctor in his life and didn't need one them what she had done. It would be a simple carnivorous," she said to the silence. That sound now, just because his daughter thinks he looks recounting of events. No hysteria. No theatrics. they make, that sighing, isn't the wind. It's the poorly. Jay chuckles at that and says he probably She would be matter of fact and simply say that spirits of lost men moaning as they slip though doesn't need him, but if he didn't mind he would this was what Jay wanted and she had carried out those thick arms, trying to find their way out. just have a look at him anyway. The man is old his wish. and tubercular and there is nothing really that he Carrie stopped and looked at the case in her could do except spend some time listening to a hand. The moonlight caught on the silver Carrie stopped suddenly, breathless from the lonely man try his voice on a human ear. Just lettering, "Gerald Emmet Clay, January 3, 1928 walk and the remembered terror. The before Jay leaves the old man grips his arm and edge of the to April 21, 1971." And on the back of the case, woods was less than 20 yards ahead. She says, "Doc, I'm gittin' old. Ya see that there "I'm filling up with ashes, love." Ashes! contemplated throwing the case into its dark burner." He spits on the stove and watches his Hoar frost of years, of Irish black hair and blue center and running back across the field to the tobacco juice sizzle on the hot surface. "It's near eyes all melted down, condensed into what house that breathed and was warm. "Oh, darling, full up with ashes. I'm like that. I'm just fillin' up mysterious elements? Helen held the case to her I'm sorry. I really wouldn't have done that. It's with ashes." When Jay came home he told her ear and shook it. But the ashes whispered so just that I was so scared. You knew I'd be scared. about it. "Isn't that some metaphor, honey?" He softly against the black leather sides that she You must have believed I could do it. I know repeated it with a slight alteration, "I'm filling up could scarcely hear. Just voices on velvet and that you loved these woods. That you tracked wish ashes, love." slippered feet. The sound would not catch on deer and never shot. That you knew you were She removed the lid and looked in disbelief at anything as solid as words. It was a secret sound the master here." the ashes. Just ashes. No blue eyes, no deep - that she sometimes felt was not really wind at all. As she approached the edge of the woods, the throated chuckle, no slender fingers. Just Carrie looked across the diminished field to the flat, trees seemed to be huddled together like faceless ashes. They have nothing to do with trees and slowed her pace. Jay, primitive spirits protecting themselves. Beneath she thought. She sprinkled them at the base of It was after Lisa was stillborn that she first felt her feet she could feel the cushion of decay. The tilt! tree like a priest sprinkling holy water. They the mystery of the trees. damp, dark odor of pine invaded her pores and swirled up in a cloud, in a brief pantonine of there was the smell of another wold, of a time form and then settled at the base of the birch. Sunlight slid through the crack in the center of before words. The shadows pressed close about She turned and glared fiercely into the silence. the drape and sat upon the mahogany bureau. her. She thought she must not let them go over Then her taut muscles relaxed. She thrust a thin She felt it as a Presence, a sentient being bringing her head. She had to rise above them. For Jay. smile into the dark center and left. the secrets of stellar space into her room. She, "This is for Jay," she said to the trees. The sound As she started back across the field, she felt too, had been journeying through space, through of her voice surprised her. She felt a Jay's face close to hers as it was that last night strange the mysterious subterrain of sleep. She wanted to power over the inarticulate darkness. "For Jay, together. He was tender. He touched her cheek a call to it and say, "Surely after coming so far we for Jay. This is for Jay," she repeated as she thousand times and said that she was his Braille should know, should understand something." leaned against the knotty whiteness of a birch. tablet. That he was a blind man memorizing her. But it sat, a golden orb of silence on her bureau. The words, "I am filling up with ashes, low." She held him in her little house, and then he It occurred to her that she alone in the world flashed in front of her eyes like tlx; temperature slipped away from her. Fell down the centuries, might be alive. Jay and Jerry had crossed the and time on the bank building. They puzzled her. past the sun and all galaxies. Left only traces of field to the woods early this morning while the They were familiar, but they had no sharp himself embedded within. Webbing of fern that house was still in shadow. Perhaps they too were corners to cling to. They were smooth like would fossilize in her mind. "It was not like only shadows. She felt the house descend upon pebbles ground down by the years of sea carrying a child," she thought. "There would be her, press her thin, shutting out all sound. She washing. She forced herself to close her eyes no coming out, no relief." Yet she was proud to was a leaf preserved in rock. Some geologist against the darkness — to remember. carry him. To be his monument. Tuesday director/Robert Sickels drawing/David Kirkpatrick