Revard: birch canoe

Red men embraced
my body's whiteness,
cutting into me
carved it free,
sewed it tight
with sinews taken
from the lightfoot deer
who leaped this stream --
now in my ghost-skin
they glide over clouds
at home in the fish's
fallen heaven.


Carter Revard (b. 1931)
From G. Benson, ed., New Poems on the Underground 2006