Slow Smoke/Rattling-Claw

by Lew Sarett

FIGURES IN BRONZE

 

Grand Portage Reservation
Flute-reed River
Lake Winnibigoshish
Lake Superior
Grand Marais, Minnesota

RATTLING-CLAW An Indian Spinster

For thirty Moons-of-Flowers-and-Grass she waited,
Waited for something, something that never came.
When she was but a fingerling, she took
A buckskin pack upon her shoulder-blades;
And from the cranberry swamps of Val Brillant
She slogged upon the devious snow-shoe trail
Of Two-Guns-Calf, her sire, and followed him
To Goat-haunt Range, to mountain solitude.

Ninety-four miles from kin and village folk
They lived in isolation, year on year,
Running their otter trap-lines in the hills,
Harvesting rice and roots and saskatoons,
And gathering for margin of luxury
The annual yield of fruit and maple-sugar.

Here in the hostile upland, Rattling-Claw,
Groomed by the keen wind, the alpine sun,
Waxed opulent with beauty; in maidenhood
She blossomed like a lily, a crimson lily,
Wafted as seedling from a lowland swamp
To chilling solitude of timber-line,
And come, by stroke of chance, to rich ripe fruit—
When mellow sun brought flushed maturity
To all her sisters in the far savanne.

I recollect the night I came on them.
The District Ranger, fearing forest-fires,
Had sent me out to run down flaming stubs
Struck in the pineries by lightning-flash.
A twilight caught me at the mountain lodge
Of Two-Guns-Calf; electing to break the night
With him, I picketed my mare, I flung
My blankets down and shared his food and flame.

While Two-Guns pried me gently for the news
Of Val Brillant, his daughter set the bowls
Of steaming wild-rice, the roast of venison.
And as we spoke, she lingered at my side,
Solicitous of every mood and whim,
Trembling at every touch of casual hand,
Eager to salvage from our talk a glance
Of admiration, a morsel of approval.
And warranted they were! Suffused her flesh
From clear cold winds; seductive was the curve
Of throat that palpitated with an ardor
Sprung from a wild sweet earth; the dusky eyes,
Low-lidded with a shy slow invitation—
A crimson lily ripe for seed, and waiting,
Waiting for pollen-bearing winds to come
From out a far low country, a humming-bird,
A butterfly, a roving bumblebee.

And later, when we left old Two-Guns nodding
Beside the fire, and ventured down the trail
To Heron Spring, to fill our birch-bark buckets—
Vivid the memory: the stoic firs,
The lichen-covered ridge, the pool of sky
Quivering with silver fish, the eager pupil
Close by my side the while my finger sketched
On night the constellations, star by star,
The Northern Crown, the Bear, the Flying Swan—
Too few they were! And when a timber-wolf
Shivered the solitude with eerie wails
That drove her to my arms in playful fright:
The rounded warmth of her, the yielding flesh,
The moist vermilion of her mouth that brushed
By chance against my cheek—oh! it would test
The iron in the will of any man
To hold secure its chill integrity
Against the surging fire of Rattling-Claw;
Either it yielded, molten, soon or late,
Or else was purified to tempered steel. . . .

In Goat-haunt Range, old Rattling-Claw, alone,
Flings out the line of traps, draws up alone
Her buckets at the spring, and sets the roast
Of venison before her palsied sire;
In Goat-haunt isolation, Rattling-Claw,
Wasted by years, by hungers unfulfilled,
Companioned by a hound on whom she rains
Her ardor, lets fall her virtues one by one
To earth like petals withered—a lily, parched
In the Moon-of-Turning-Colors-in-the-Leaves,
Raspy of blade, forlornly wilted, waiting,
Waiting for pollen-bearing winds to come
From out a far low country, a venturing moth,
A roving bee, a bird, a butterfly.