At the Cahuilla Indian Reservation, Banning, California

Hours she sits by the window. Reading. Taking notes. Words
from a phrasebook: a sticker sticks me, to rise up high, it is not enough.

Of food from impossible sources: from spiny trees, beans;
from beavertail and barrel, fruit. Easy to fill a notebook. To know,

for an afternoon, important birds. Dances that won't begin
without silence. Kin we revere. Kin we joke with.

What we really want is what she wants. Raven darkness. A little color
intermingling . . . a black widow spider . . . yes . . .

Martha Silano teaches English at Bellevue and Edmonds Community Colleges. Her first book of poems, All Things Want To Float, is in need of a publisher.