You know how the deer on Market Street are
With their stoplight eyes
Picking their way down old runoff paths
Past the disappearing relocated indigenous women
The ravens are here to sing us visible
Drumming on their collection of upended pots and Industrial buckets
Don't you tell me how we've changed
We were right there Near the department store
Near the burial sites Singing to the ancestors
This isn't an abstract gesture
It's not a schoolroom exercise
There are predators here
And the maps of safe passage change every day
And the wind comes up in the afternoon
Don't you tell me how we've changed
The roots of this hill have learned what to call us
Just about
Our clothes collected for the festival
Our family members taken to who knows
You might just sit down and listen for a change
I'm not part of your curriculum
We're a whole other thing
Light reflecting off of the miles of glass
How many feet deep was it?
Can you hear the water like shattered windows
Piled just like them
Just there where the tall buildings lean like stealing
© Kim Shuck. All rights reserved.
Kim Shuck is a complicated equation with an irrational answer. Shuck is the current and 7th poet laureate of San Francisco and will have a new book out from City Lights Press in the Fall. www.kimshuck.com
