Marlon Sherman: California Poets Part 9, Five Poems

Marlon Sherman

December 22nd, 2025

California Poets: Part IX

Marlon Sherman

Five Poems

GRANDPA BEN

 (BEN WORN OUT HORN)

blankets and sandwiches and

a washrag in a jar of soapy water

us kids

laughing and wrestling

in the backseat

until Dad tells us to

stop we’re rocking the car

I fall asleep somewhere around Philip

and wake up somewhere

north of the Cheyenne River

lost my sense of direction

totally turned around

feels like we’re headed east

never seen any cherries at

Cherry Creek but they must have some

cattle guards

dirt roads

over a yellowgrass hill to

a little log house

don’t know why I

call them Grandma Amy and Grandpa Ben

when they’re the only

Grandma and Grandpa I have

but that’s what

all of us call them

except Mom she

calls them Mom and Dad

I think Grandpa Ben invited the

whole reservation and they’re

all in the corral

one shot to the head

and the steer drops

like a dishrag

never seen a steer shot before

big deal but

everybody’s laughing

a lot of sharp knives and

brown hands and

the steer is roasts and ribs

and they hang the hide

over the back fence

and everybody gets something

and then they climb in their

buckboards and old Fords and

go home happy I guess

because they’re still

laughing and talking

Mom and Grandma Amy

spend all afternoon

scrubbing out that steer’s belly

and there’s a lot of it

like a slimy rope and

Grandma’s gonna be up early

tomorrow boiling it and

we’ll have roast steer

and taniga with timsila and

wojapi for dessert

but for now there’s papa saka

that I can chew on all day

until Grandpa grabs me

and laughs and calls me

tgalo and I get schu and

don’t eat any more

then he gives me

a knife case that

he beaded himself and

a wooden knife that

he carved to go with it and

he tells me not to

stab anybody with the knife and

I stick the case in my belt and

whip out the knife and

pretend I’m stabbing

all the bad guys in the world and

he laughs again and

I run outside to find

the rest of the bad guys

after supper when it’s dark

Grandpa tells us stories and

some are old and

some are new and

sometimes we laugh and

sometimes we’re scared and

then I kiss Grandma and Grandpa and

they smell warm like

woodsmoke

as they tuck us all

into their buffalo robe and

we go to sleep listening

to their soft Lakota

around the table

Whirlwind Horse

September 11, 2001

Louie was my friend;

he held me as a child,

                as friends will,

and Sadie did too, yes, Sadie… 

I remember

breathing in that warm

Whirlwind Horse breath. 

This is what Louie said once:

Sit under a storm tree

if you want to be prairie popcorn. 

I remember…

I remember the westering sun

playing games

with that old

late summer cottonwood,

dappling my hands gold and brown

and hinting of red,

come eve. 

Clouds clotted,

as they will,

over the afternoon blue. 

I scratched my back against the tree:

maybe it was chiggers,

maybe a flea,

maybe I just like the feel

of bark on my bare skin. 

My eyes blinked,

maybe,

or closed, and

without notice

clouds blotted the sun,

                                as they will,

those impossible

thunderhead heights,

gathering lightning and rain

up and then up

until they could hold no more,

then

slamming bright arrows to the ground,

a hundred buffalo herds

passing close. 

The air tickled, then prickled;

as my hair rose, so I,

shot like an arrow,

sprinted

into the wind, into the rain,

as buffalo will.

Energy spent,

I stopped, turned –

                as mule deer will.

The sight and sound missed me,

or I them,

for behind me,

limp

as overdone corn,

lay

the old cottonwood,

now two,

split clean with an obsidian knife.

Rain surrounded me,

and Thunder’s stillness,

sharp in my chest,

while the sun sat quiet

over the sacred hills.

Louie and Sadie died

as friends will,

and when all else is gone –

which it often is –

the towering storm,

the reddening sun,

the sheltering tree –

I remember,

I remember,

I remember:

Whirlwind Horse breath. 

And it is enough

for now.

THE FIRST TIME DAD DIED

Now that was a winter, the first time Dad died:

                stars winked like a con man’s smile;

frozen breath and tears, all the same,

                turned to crystal, perfect and clear.

Long night with Old Man Red Cloud,

singing and drumming

               while the moon froze the snow lying hard and sharp

                                on the Old Year’s ice.

Dad crawled into his old ford Pinto,

                crutches and drum by his side --

spinning and sliding, those reservation roads

sent him straight to the ditch where the

snow was too deep for those withered old legs

so he sat and watched his life collect

                in patterns inside the windshield.

Stiff and cold when they found him next morning

like one of those antique steel toys.

Not a flutter of his frosted eyelashes,

nor a whisper from his chilly heart;

not a song from his singer’s lips,

nor a note from the drum on the seat,

but those Public Health doctors woke him right up,

screaming the pain of revival.

The frost didn’t bite him,

it swallowed him whole:

                chewed on his ears, eyes and mouth.

He lay in the hospital, surrounded in white, and

mumbled past his swollen tongue,

“Don’t you believe them when they try to tell you

                                                freezing is the way to go;

                they’re goddamn liars and they’re lying to you:

                                It hurts like hell; it hurts like hell.

. . . And what did they do with my drum?”

THIS IS HER DREAM

For Dale Ann (Yurok/Howonquet), my wife

This is her dream and it was last night:

I was standing

over the river

on an empty platform made of

planks split from

a live redwood,

built for the men

to dip their iris nets in and

toss struggling salmon

onto river-slick planks,

When a jet boat

thrummed up to the platform

and a gray-haired man

standing in the boat

                                (he was the governor or something)

called out to me,

"What are you looking at?"

I kept my mouth shut and

just stared over his head.

I was standing on

the platform watching

two men in a canoe

tend their net,

When a jet boat

thrummed up to the platform

and a gray-haired man

standing in the boat

                                (he was the president)

called out to me,

"What are you looking at?"

I just stared over his head,

sun in my eyes.

Again he asked me

"What are you looking at?"

I just stared over his head,

wind in my long hair.

Once more he asked me

"What are you looking at?"

Eyes still on the river,

I told him

"I'm watching the ripples,

downriver from

that redwood canoe"

That was her dream and it is tomorrow.

SHE WOVE MOONBEAMS INTO HER BASKETS

For Dale Ann Frye Sherman, in honor of her mother,

who was born Dorothy Lopez at the mouth of the Smith River.

She wove moonbeams into her baskets

Yes, she was a strange one,

they all agreed.

And lazy, too.

Slept all day, out all night.

The whole village looked at her sideways

and

sniffed when they passed by her home.

Every other woman,

up at dawn,

working all daylight long,

feeding the kids

washing their faces

combing their hair

gathering ferns, beargrass, spruce,

stripping them,

weaving baskets.

Walking by her house,

early sun misting through redwood,

burden baskets on backs,

clucking tongues at this sleepy girl,

“Look at that one, sleeping her day away.

She’ll never get a husband like that.”

At noon she woke, smiled, stretched,

climbed out the hole,

stood, stretched again, arms wide to the sky,

thanked the River for flowing,

Sun for shining,

Sky for its color.

She went back inside,

took her basket and her bag,

put in seaweed and smoked salmon,

walked the trails uphill,

nibbling salmon and seaweed.

She gathered grass,

She gathered ferns,

placed them lightly in her basket,

walked to a clearing high on the hill,

sat, preparing her basket to weave,

shadows long as Sun set,

laid out materials,

said goodnight to Sun,

Hello to Evening Star,

waited for Moon.

She sat beneath the trees,

gathered moonbeams as they fell,

shredded through leaves,

so her new baskets

glowed in cool summer’s

luminous and healing beauty.

Far up the rain coast,

far down the dry coast,

far over the mountains,

they treasured her baskets

as objects of great wealth,

because

this lazy girl who

slept all day

wove moonbeams into her baskets.

Author Bio:

I am Oglala, of the Lakota Nation. Mark, my father, was Oglala. Alice, my mother, was Mniconjou. My seven sisters and brothers heard my first cries in the dark of a two-room log house outside Kyle, on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. For anyone who has been born on the land, raised among a tribe, homesickness can be a terminal illness. Those of us who are away from our tribes choose different ways to ease the symptoms. Some drink, trying to drown the pain; some sing and drum, trying to revive the memories. I write, hoping to do a little of both. Often, as I lie awake here in the California dark, when all is quiet except for my drumming heart, I ask the memory of pine winds and gentle summer nights to shush me to sleep.

I am a professor emeritus of Native American Studies, having taught at Humboldt State University in Arcata, California.

______________________________________________________

                My brother and I lay on our bellies in a cactus patch at the top of a hill, small tufts of grass in front of our faces. Small brown ants walked their trails inches from our noses. In the swale below us, moving from north to south, antelope grazed, peaceful under the watchful eye of an old matriarch. Far off in the east we saw a cloud of dust rising from the powwow grounds near Oglala. We thought we could hear the deep drumming from the dance circle, but that couldn't be: even though we knew the sound carried for miles, the wind was from the wrong direction.

                A fresh, cool breeze gathered up fluffy morning clouds. Rain would come by midafternoon, one of those rains that quiets late summer dust and brings out children's smiles brighter than the sky behind the retreating clouds.

                We glanced skyward and saw black wings riding the cool wind. We had lain there so long watching the antelope herd that buzzards had begun circling above us.

                "Watch us if you want, Brothers, but you're wasting your time," I thought. "We're alive; you should just move along, because we're alive."