El Apache

There is a way to gesture, not to spell,
The most complex and most abstract of truths
In Sign. But it is never word for word.
The deaf man and his wife converse across

The aisle of the store like aliens
Out of a silent planet. Silence raised
Above the shoppers’ flow and the canned songs
And the canned goods. They use the Indian words.

“My words are like the stars that never change.”
The silence of a road whose only pump
Closes at eight is torn down in the night
By ghosts that gallop through the thunder’s gulch

And through the crevasse that the war yell left.
He sent a message to the great white chief:
“Let him be just, deal kindly with my tribe.”
Dust feels our footprints, meditates, responds.

-Monika Cooper