Manitowak
He might have sprung from dream:
golden head, the ram, not what he seemed.
enlightening my despair; I thought him divine.
Anthropomorphic, he appeared,
robed in an illuminated garland pattern, entwined:
three sisters: maize, squash, and beans,
serpents, and trees,
and dangling ornament: wampum, nuts, and seeds.
Awe struck, he grew, changed, ascending
through the cosmic heavens, time, pending.
I rolled over, my chrysalis, maybe in fear,
I thought myself evil, I might have been blessed,
for this is what he communicated
from his blazen chest:
He had risen from the ahchu,
come from the hill,
older than ancient, and older, still.
He was visiting from The Underworld,
blown in by the wind,
to appease The Lenape,
consecrate the sin.
They slept in the mound of earth
behind the seed mill,
where the blackbirds gather to watch.
Their coffins are dry roots,
Sumac and such.
The sepulcher is empty,
gathering dust,
but the cairn is not deserted,
the strong shades hunt at dusk.
The Metinuak had known him,
so long ago,
when man respected nature and lived by the bow.
Now the spring had run dry, exhausted,
and needed fed,
if not by magic teeth and mythic toads,
then by willing victims, sleeping in their beds.
He came if called, still sullen, stoic,
he came here to reap.
He joined in the harvest, slash, and burn.
He must've been curious, or sensitive: deep,
for he spared me a slaying, and I settled to sleep.
I was haunted by his vision,
drowning in guilt,
I felt I'd been lassoed and
buried in silt.
I reasoned him demonic, going on what I knew,
deceptive, fraudulent,
my suspicion grew.
I believed him from another dimension,
beyond the sun and stars.
I imagined him meeting Hercules,
Min, from Mars.
He had been dashing, but it was those horns.
I figured him from Lucifer and fired my scorn.
Still, he'd creep into my painting,
he flooded my thought.
I made him a doll,
I thought I should not.
The doll, named, Ram I Am, is crafted of clay,
and I began to find him within my own psyche that day.
It became a wonder, I started to look,
rooting through archives, I read every book.
I found him six times in Egypt,
in a cave in Crete.
He is ritualized in Exodus, Leviticus, too,
Celtic chief of The Underworld,
sophisticated,
nothing new.
He is of spirit: life force, sacred to some.
The Grandfather, guardian,
passion of love.
His blood is holy
and blesses the home.
He rules from his mountain zone.
Far from my enemy, he is Netap,
happy friend.
He was here in the beginning
and will burn through the end.
