In August of 1980, fresh out of college, I found myself on a connecting plane flight to Bangor, Maine. In the seat next to me was a friendly young man only a few years older than myself. He had jet black hair, warm brown eyes, and a quietly lyrical way of expressing himself. I liked him immediately. When I told him that I was traveling to meet my wife, who was interviewing for a job teaching special education at a mid-coast town, he said with intensity, "We need special education teachers, bad. Tell her to come." His name was Tim Love, the newly elected Governor of the Penobscot Nation. That conversation changed my life and led to many poems, one of which is "Hunter’s Moon."

Hunter's Moon
Michael Campagnoli

Charley Dje’kwadis
broke the seal
on a fifth of Wild Turkey.
"To capitalists bro,"
he said and winked,
fat-face like a chinaman.
Charley Daylight,
friend of my youth.

Outside
a thin crust of snow
covered the ground.
The clouds were low,
the air warm and damp.
In the muffled light
a cold rain fell,
piercing the grey mist:
a night of equivocal shadows.
Across the brown river
Great Northern’s wheels
grinded endlessly
(engines
of precisioned grace)
and I,
in my room,
unable to move, un-
able to yield the slightest
   velleity.

Charley passed the bottle
to Old Joe Attean. Joe,
face dark and lined,
hard as walnut,
took a deep swallow.

   "Once," he said,
eyes cloudy and vague,
already drunk, staring
at the ceiling, speaking
to his dead.

   "Once,
under spear-fish
moon, a time before
moosetowners,
silent, going towards
daylight,
I stood naked
and
welcomed the dawn."

Charley Dje’kwadis rolled his eyes.
He smiled and bit
the few hairs of his thin
moustache. "Here we
go again," he said.

   "Through me," Old Joe
continued, "the
wordless sun flowed
in great bright circles
in and out. . .joining
mind and muscle
to Gluskape’s ripe
green earth.
   Brimming."

Daytime up on St. John Street,
Old Joe stops tourists
from the mainland. "Want
to see Injun dance. I can
dance for you gib me
dollars-cents." Left-eye
closed, limping,
he shakes a hollow cow-horn
filled with shot and does
a short-step. One of the
few who still remembers.
His soft chant
rises up against the clamor
of the mills
like baffled smoke
from a campfire.
"You end up just like him,
you don't get out of this
place," Charley Daylight
tells me. "You smart. Went
to collitch. Get a job. Be
somebody."

"What about you?" I ask.

"Me? I’m just another dumb Indian."

"Bestowing wisdom,"
Joe announced, placing
a withered hand on my arm.
"Words," he said, urgent,
like this time it was different,
not just the drink
talking, "Words without language--
   pastless,
   futureless,
   unspoken."

"You tell ‘em," Charley
Daylight hollered, cupping
his mouth with one
hand and raising
the bottle.

"Not mind," Joe declared,
"but heart and sinew
and blood. Truths that will
outlast the white man."

A Pure Man, a Runner;
the best hunter
in the tribe. A life
fashioned by wit, pure
and simple, lived in the
split-second of time.

Joe brought his fist
down hard on the
arm of my pink-stuffed
chair, then stood up
painfully,
steadied himself.
The milky eyes snapped clear.
He took a deep breath.

"Pumping," he cried,
"Pumping! Defying utterance!"

On a roll now, voice strong,
eyes bright and luminous.
   Burnished.

"My feet planted
      in the rich black earth.
      I relinquished myself--
      welcomed the tree, the flower, the
      moose, the tomcod, the bear,
      the beaver, the musk of woman,
      the rutting juices
      of man’s stiff youth."

"Go, Ma’ndoam’ek, go!" Charley
Daylight shouted, taking a long
pull on the Wild Turkey.

"The sweet taste of muskrat tail
      pulled slick between your teeth,
      the sour smoke of pemmican,
      the foul stench of your own dung,
      the snot and sweat, the acrid
      breath of age, yes, these too,
      and the grass, the wind, the sky,
      the yellow meat of the sun, itself,
Unapart. Embracing all."

Joe, his voice losing
its copper strength, opened
his brittle arms wide.

"I bequeathed
      my blood to the roots
      of a sapling, grew tall
      as a comely tree.
Singing,

      Yo ho+ ho+       ho he no+
      hu wa+ ho+       yo ho+
      ho ha yo+       ho+ ya he+.

      Rejoicing.
       And so I went."

Exhausted,
Joe sank back
into the arms
of my frayed old chair.
His copper chin sagged
on his bony chest. He looked

at me sadly, smiled,
and shook his head. He
was used up. Depleted.
No more left.

Charley Daylight,
eyes sweet and defeated,
took another swig of the
Wild Turkey, nodded
and handed
me the bottle.

We looked at each other
for a moment in silence,
then I shoved the bottle away.

I pushed myself up and
took Old Joe’s cow horn,
his ahalnan, from his side.
I gave it a few shakes just
to hear its sound.
Spreading my arms, like Joe,
I welcomed the riseless sun,
the winter-coming moon,
the river-rush of spring.
I beat the rattle in one-two
time. Step and scuff, stamping
my heels, counter-clockwise
as Old Joe taught me.

He looked up gratefully.
Blinked once, twice,
then began to cry.

Charley Dje’kwadis smiled
that fat-faced smile. "You
one crazy Redman," he told me.
I raised the ahalnan high
as my head and struck it
with the palm of my hand.

While Great Northern’s wheels,
hot with oil-sweat, grinded
endlessly, endlessly,
I danced and chanted
far across the night.

And so I went:
      Singing,

     Yo ho+ ho+       ho he no+
      hu wa+ ho+       yo ho+
      ho ha yo+       ho+ ya he+.

Rejoicing.

      Dancing backward (in going
            forward toward the dawn. . .)

******

"Hunter's Moon" won an Honorable Mention
in the People Before Profits Poetry Prize 2006.
It previously appeared in New Letters (Vol. 68, No. 2), and in
Ah-meddy-ga by Michael Campagnoli (All Nations Press 2005). "Hunter's Moon" also won the New Letters Poetry Prize
and the All Nations Press Chapbook Award.

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