AFTER AND BEFORE THE LIGHTNING

by Ortiz, Simon J.

• ISBN13: 9780816514489
• ISBN10: 0816514488
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1994-08-01
• Publisher: Univ of Arizona Pr

Summary

Highway 18 between Mission and Okreek, South Dakota,is a stretch of no more than eighteen miles, but late at night or in a blizzard it seems endless. "It feels like being somewhere between South Dakota and 'there,'" says Simon Ortiz, "perhaps at the farthest reaches of the galaxy." Acoma Pueblo poet Ortiz spent a winter in South Dakota, teaching at Sinte Gleska College on the Rosebud Lakota Sioux Reservation. The bitter cold and driving snow of a prairie winter were a reality commanding his attention through its absolute challenge to survival and the meaning of survival. Ortiz's way of dealing with the hard elements of winter was to write After and Before the Lightning, prose and verse poems that were his response to that long season between the thunderstorms of autumn and spring. "I needed a map of where I was and what I was doing in the cosmos," he writes. In these poems, which he regards as a book-length poetic work, he charts the vast spaces of prairie and time that often seem indistinguishable. As he faces the reality of winter on the South Dakota reservation, he also confronts the harsh political reality for its Native community and culture and for Indian people everywhere. "Writing this poetry reconnected me to the wonder and awe of life," Ortiz states emphatically. Readers will feel the reality of that wonder and awe--and the cold of that South Dakota winter--through the gentle ferocity of his words.

Table of Contents

Preface
Lightning I
Lightning II
Hot Coffee at Ron's	p. 3
Earth Mother, She Cares	p. 3
One morning, one winter	p. 4
Driving, the Snowy Wind	p. 4
The far hills	p. 5
South and West	p. 5
Morning, the Horizon	p. 6
Meaning	p. 6
When we return to Okreek	p. 7
Vital Margins	p. 7
The Edge Facing Us	p. 8
I've forgotten	p. 8
Salvation	p. 9
An Insistent Gentle Animal	p. 9
I wake up	p. 10
Hearts and Hearts	p. 11
A blue jay pecks	p. 12
Comprehending	p. 12
Destined	p. 13
Morning: Dawnlight holds	p. 14
Dream: Quiet Wind	p. 14
Morning radio: The weather report	p. 15
Between South Dakota and There	p. 15
As we come this night	p. 16
Voyage to Haven	p. 16
Knowing	p. 16
There is always the moment	p. 17
Field of Scars	p. 17
Thanksgiving Day: Going to get wood	p. 18
On This Day	p. 18
Just at this moment, the sun	p. 19
Thanking the Pheasant Hens	p. 19
Later on, I will remember	p. 19
Long Roads	p. 21
Across the Prairie Hills	p. 21
Juncture	p. 22
What I Would Want	p. 23
Crossing	p. 23
Friends write me from Arizona, Colorado	p. 24
Blind Curse	p. 24
Icicles fascinate	p. 25
Foolish Believers	p. 25
Claiming Territory	p. 26
To See the Prairie Sun	p. 27
Coping	p. 28
The radio report of downtown Winner	p. 28
Sun Prayer	p. 28
To Here, We Return	p. 29
Windtrails carved	p. 29
Barren	p. 33
How our lives turn, bending and breaking	p. 33
Storm	p. 34
Inter-Crossings	p. 35
The deer are beautiful, unafraid	p. 35
Watching the Ice	p. 36
Notion of Time	p. 36
The Vision of Finework	p. 37
Nothing To Do With Halley	p. 37
On late-night television, two U.S. scientists	p. 38
The Possibility	p. 38
Coming from Valentine, Nebraska	p. 39
Enormous Knowledge	p. 39
Tonight, a man in a green coat and a gorilla mask	p. 40
Destination: Destiny	p. 40
It couldn't have been more than fifteen minutes	p. 40
Lakota people here keep asking	p. 41
Here and Now	p. 42
Leave things alone	p. 42
Searching	p. 43
Part of the day spent wrapping Christmas gifts	p. 43
What We Come to Know	p. 44
Haaweh Song	p. 44
It wasn't my father who told me the story	p. 45
Freedom From Scavenging	p. 45
Journeying	p. 46
Origins	p. 46
Forever	p. 47
Yesterday, the few sunny days	p. 47
Beauty Unmatched	p. 48
We lunge toward it, driving	p. 48
Storming Toward a Precipice	p. 49
Survival in the Cold Dark	p. 49
I don't know though. I may say	p. 50
Respect and Recognition	p. 50
Choosing words is a waste	p. 51
Beauty All Around: Borrowed From Dineh	p. 52
First Prayers	p. 52
It's strangely quiet	p. 52
What It Takes	p. 53
The newspaper cites a tragedy	p. 53
The Farmer and the Banker	p. 54
Ann's mother tells a story	p. 54
Driving back from Winner	p. 54
Silence, Quiet	p. 55
I make phone calls today from here	p. 55
We don't know what to do	p. 59
A Story of Courage	p. 59
Savage and Animal Yearning	p. 60
Perception of change	p. 60
Vengeance, the violent repeat of murder	p. 60
Never Fulfilled	p. 60
Redemption Slipping Away	p. 61
It's not that strange	p. 61
To Be	p. 62
A gentle winter wind moves	p. 62
To Gather Them With Love	p. 63
Dawn	p. 63
Walking toward Winner yesterday	p. 64
Becoming Human	p. 64
The more names you have	p. 65
Our Names	p. 65
Albert was telling about when	p. 66
After reading several Alice Walker poems	p. 66
What Is a Poem?	p. 66
The Dreamer's Song	p. 67
Happy birthday, Martin Luther King, Jr.!	p. 68
Early, the Prairie Awakens Me	p. 69
This morning the sun	p. 69
A Letter From Pt. Hope	p. 70
The Right Instinct	p. 70
It was snowing in the morning	p. 71
The Wind Doesn't Know What To Do But Be Blue	p. 72
There's a bright prairie sun	p. 72
Never the Moment Until Now	p. 73
Nothing and Everything	p. 74
Moon and the Night	p. 74
Destination, Seeking	p. 75
Looking for Morning Birds	p. 75
In the evening several days ago	p. 76
Out There	p. 77
So it happened. It could have been only a story	p. 77
A Savage Dream	p. 78
The scene is shown on television over and over	p. 78
Keeping Pain and Sorrow	p. 79
Too Fast at 45 MPH	p. 80
Horses by a Fence	p. 81
Dawn Prayer for All	p. 81
Meeting on Stage	p. 82
As Aliyosho approached a spring	p. 82
No, The Story Is This Way	p. 83
Coming To Know	p. 84
Night Horses	p. 85
David calls Tom a cynic	p. 85
Joined	p. 86
Ordinary Moments	p. 87
The Prayer-Rain Is Here	p. 88
Loss and Grief Finding Us	p. 88
Three. On Tuesday Halmi and I	p. 89
In My Life	p. 90
A friend and I were talking yesterday afternoon	p. 90
When Is It Enough?	p. 91
He looked toward the frozen	p. 95
We and the Light	p. 95
When Aliyosho and Caballo Pinto approached	p. 95
Winter Morning and Me	p. 96
Television news this early morning	p. 96
Stellar Tendrils	p. 97
Stories, Words Finding Their Way	p. 97
Hungry Questions	p. 98
Keeping Intact	p. 98
Amazement	p. 99
He watched yellow sunbeams blooming	p. 99
Night Winter	p. 100
Good Morning, Sun. Thank you , and Good Morning, My Life!	p. 100
Magic Always	p. 100
More Real Magic	p. 101
Buffalo Light Now	p. 102
As we ride toward Mission	p. 103
Lightyears and the Prairie	p. 104
Box elders are strange	p. 104
The Promise We Live By	p. 105
Time and Place in Song	p. 106
The Sound, Yours	p. 106
Gently Now, the Blue Dawn	p. 107
The Margins Where We Live	p. 108
Beyond the Margin	p. 108
I haven't seen him for years	p. 109
Creating Language	p. 109
This or This	p. 110
Lingering in the Grip	p. 110
Pray First Then	p. 112
Underneath all this February snow	p. 112
Within the Circle Always	p. 113
After the Storm	p. 114
Winter Changing	p. 114
Winter is over, I can feel it	p. 115
"Out There"	p. 115
A Near and Evident Sign	p. 116
Once, it must have been in the summer of 1971	p. 116
Prairie Night Song	p. 117
Tomorrow Across the Prairie	p. 117
It's the way it is	p. 118
Prairie Changing Prayer	p. 119
One Scar I Feel More	p. 119
Arc of Light	p. 121
Rivers and Winter Knowing	p. 121
Mirror	p. 122
Too Late	p. 122
Knowing Shadow and Light	p. 123
Flying	p. 124
Three Days Before Spring, Snow Again	p. 125
At the Gas and Git	p. 126
Our Eagerness Blooms	p. 126
Lightning III	p. 131
Lightning IV	p. 133
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