DIANE GLANCY is professor emerita at Macalester College. Her 2014-15 books are Fort Marion Prisoners and the Trauma of Native Education, nonfiction, University of Nebraska Press, Report to the Department of the Interior, poetry, University of New Mexico Press, and three novels from Wipf & Stock, Uprising of Goats, One of Us, and Ironic Witness. A new collection of poetry was published in 2016 by W&S, The Collector of Bodies, Concern for Syria and the Middle East. She also co-edited an anthology, The World Is One Place, Native America Poets Visit the Middle East. Among her awards are two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, an American Book Award, and a 2014 Lifetime Achievement Award from Native Writers’ Circle of the Americas. Her websites: www.dianeglancy.com, www.dianeglancy.org
Holy Ghost
All their hosts shall fall down— Isaiah 34:
Holy Ghost wears furry chaps and a grapevine belt,
a red shirt and a cowboy hat.
He owns the marina by the river.
Hopscotch is his game.
But the clouds are his too.
Most days they are too heavy to let him off the ground.
He stays at the marina selling bait.
He sets a barrel fire to light Father’s message.
He comforts the customers.
Holy Ghost prophesies for the Son’s sake
with a string of words in another tongue.
He tells the Father’s stories.
Comets full of ice once fell to earth and delivered the oceans
so Father could sail.
Their impact made the ocean beds.
The heavens are still falling.
See the maple leaves splayed on the walk like wrecked stars.