cherokee poem

from my friend, debbie: "IRON WOMAN" I knew I came from a different place, a story cut apart with scissors. I would find a piece of rust in the morning or a shape in a field through a fog. I would hear a broken language as if spoken by a woman with a bird's nest on her head, long pieces of iron welded for her buckskin. She wears a mosquito mask, a crooked twig for a nose. Her teeth sewn together with close white threads. I hear her small voice from the bird's nest on her head. It once lived in a pile of fallen limbs & brush hauled to the field to burn after an ice storm. Her voice rises in the trail of smoke & mixes with mine in air. It takes a while to speak with these two voices as it takes a while to walk on two feet each one going the other way.