Slow Smoke/Still-Day

by Lew Sarett

STILL-DAY A Medicine-man

Mystic he was, more deep and passionlessThan 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 ghostsOf fish, of snakes, of moaning dead, his eyesHeld 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 deepDark pocket of the night, a Great White Owl.Ugh! Black-medicine! . . . beneath his lidsA stealthy soul would glint like any weaselGliding among the shadows in the rushes.

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