Two hundred years ago? What are two hundred years, when the people they visited had lived beside the Missouri for a thousand summers or more, and did not care about the lines Easterners drew on maps? President Thomas Jefferson cared enough to send Meriwether Lewis along with William Clark on their famous expedition, with a vision of turning these heathen people into farmers, and traders. There was, however, already a city (sixteen hundred miles from the mouth of the river) where 4000 lived—more than in Washington, or St. Louis. And their farms provided the corn so these explorers would survive the cold of 1804 to 1805. Amy Mossat lives today in New Town, North Dakota, along with her fellow Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara. Here she plants this same corn in her garden, unmodified by hybridization, or genetic engineering. Lewis, in his journals, referred to the native people as “children.” The Indians, in return, named one of their own who acted as a guide “Furnishes the white men with brains.” Amy Mossat can no longer live in Old Town, because it was hybridized, or perhaps genetically engineered, some decades ago, inundated by the Garrison Dam along with 155,000 acres of farm land—that many acres of memories, and of sacred places. Lewis and Clark passed through 50 nations. Each with its sacred places. You and I know a few names, like the one we borrowed for a capital city after the Omaha village of Tonwontaga was wiped out by the pox, or Chinook, because we gave it to a fish. We take the time to worry about the future of fish. But who can tell me what has happened to the Chinook people? The Otoe and the Missouri were expelled to Oklahoma, where descendants still long for their northern plains. The Lemhi Shoshone were herded to the desert of southern Idaho. Some of the elders of the Nez Percé, in 1877, who were children when that tribe twice saved our explorers from starvation, remembered—as they were rounded up and removed. You, too, can remember. Just follow the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail through towns where suicide is the number one cause of death. Steve Bloom June 2003 *Based on reporting by Timothy Egan (New York Times, June 15, 2003)

Sometimes politics proves to be as strange as poetry. Never thought that I would feel at home in a demonstration where one American flag follows another, after another, after another. But today it’s not the usual “my country can beat up your country” crowd. No, this time it’s the invisible people, speaking out loud for a change. “I am Haitian; I am Korean; I am Pakistani,” they tell me. “I am Dominican; I am Mexicana; I am Filipino; I am Ethiopian; I am Jamaican; I am Guatemalan and I live here too. I will not be less of a human being than you. “I fly the flag of my country. And I fly the flag of my other country; for whether I am there or here your nation would collapse without the work I do.” So I stand here watching, ask myself whether we have, perhaps, just taken one small step toward the day when every human being will, at last, fly every flag of every nation and still feel at home.

When you think of me think blackberries, not the kind you find on a supermarket shelf, but growing wild at the edge of a mountain meadow. When you think of me think blizzards that paralyze the city, making everyone stop, and finally pay attention. When you think of me think a quartet in the last act of the opera: seduction, suspicion, vengeance, heartbreak harmonizing before the storm. When you think of me think countless numbers angry enough to make the others-- who currently imagine that they hold power--flee for their lives. When you think of me think asters, because this flower has never before appeared in one of my poems. When you think of me think an entire universe small enough to fit inside a quark, waiting patiently for the human species to develop instruments sensitive enough so that it might be discovered. When you think of me think a universe, inside a quark, big enough to contain all the blackberries and mountains, blizzards, cities with opera houses, and multitudes so angry that they do not notice the asters, or the lovers inside of this poem waiting to be discovered as soon as we develop the necessary sensitivity.

“I smell horse shit” shouted  the tuxedo-clad young man standing through  the sun roof of the limousine  turning right at the Southeast  corner of Central Park  (where the old-time hansom  cabs wait around all day with their horses  shitting so it falls in the street)  smiling smugly and no doubt  thinking himself clever.  “You are horse shit” I said  to myself as I walked quickly along  smelling the same air on the same  street, well satisfied that I  was more witty than he. 

She has the seat next to mine on the Chicago flight.  There is, perhaps, a god of minor miracles  who arranges these things.  (Does she realize how pleasant it is for an older man  when young women dress like that?)  I help her hoist her bag  into the overhead bin.  "Thank you," she tells me with a smile,  and seems to mean them both.  (Does she realize how hard it is on an older man  when young women dress like that?)  She takes out a magazine which makes me realize  we are both headed for the same conference.  Should I introduce myself?  We talk a bit, small.  she is from Brazil,  understands the limitations of the Lula government.  And so intelligence, I discover,  is part of her beauty.  I ask her name again.  She will have to tell me a third time  before the sieve between my ears  holds it in place.  "Don't worry about that," she suggests.  And I add kindness to the list of things  I can measure about her.  After a time I take out my new hand-held computer  with its roll up keyboard  to work on a poem.  She has never seen a roll-up keyboard before  and is fascinated,  asks "What kind of poetry do you write?"  I give her my two chapbooks,  go on composing, holding my breath  for a kindly response.  She reads one page, turns to the next—  a good sign I tell myself.  "I like this one," she exclaims,  pointing to the verse about horse shit  and Central Park South.  "I know that corner."  Later she promises to read them all,  and send me her thoughts via email.  I will never make love to this woman, desirable—  not beyond the reach of my dreams,  since dreams have a distant reach, but  beyond any reasonable hope.  Still, she allowed me to stroke  her mind with my poems  while she returned that caress  with her attention, a kindly word,  and a promise for the future as she read.  And so I leave the plane with an afterglow  not so diffent from the one I used to know,  as it hovered over a lover's bed. 

When I say “star” whom do you think of?  Some performer who outshines the rest, of course.  But gaze skyward one night  beyond those stars bright enough for unaided eyes.  Assign one to each person on the earth,  and realize that you still have trillions  to offer future generations.  Some of these are brighter than those we’ve known for millenia,  but find themselves too far away.  Others, less pretentious, may be average in the energy which they emit  yet could, sun-like, be incubating planets  with self-replicating, photosynthesizing,  or even sentient beings.  So next time, out for a drive,  or stroll, or simply sitting  in a park somewhere,  notice those who pass so casually,  and think once more of all the stars out there  that you and I will never see. 

Marta thought to herself how the stone monuments we build to aid our memories fade with time just as memory itself. It merely takes a bit longer. Samuel wondered why this one dead leaf clung to the tree throughout winter when all the others had abandoned their branches. Chandra could not see any difference between the ground on which her left foot rested, in Virginia, and that beneath her right, which someone once and forever decreed to be part of North Carolina. Martin stopped, with the fork half way to his mouth, and considered how this chicken breast he was eating because he needed something quick and easy tonight, would be a special celebration— perhaps once a year, perhaps once a lifetime— for so many in the world. Jo-Li came to the conclusion that despite the popularity of songs about love—or maybe not despite this at all—a lot of people were just as lonely as she. Jesus had a revelation, while listening to mass, that all the other religions of the world give just as much comfort to those who believe. Maria walked across the road from the inn where she was staying to place a spray of wild daisies on a grave in the old country churchyard of someone she had never known. Abdul stopped to watch the woods on the edge of springtime, full to bursting with reddish and greenish buds. Lisa passed the unshaven men gathered around the flaming trash can, and heard them talking about solutions for Palestine and Israel. “Wow, these are human beings too!” she realized. * * * * * And yet not one of them was bold enough to write a song, or a poem, or tell a single soul, and so you and I will never know.