Under returning Paha Sapa skies,
Tȟašúŋke Witkó wore a shirt of stars
Painted with the immunity of evening.
Across multiple worlds,
Current histories began to subside.
Once on Harney peak,
I saw all our years
Fall like a single leaf:
The child’s chance of summer and revelation –
An exhausted dance of the sun,
Where all histories collapsed to one.
What is called the beginning and end
Entangle the same moment –
An intricate beadwork of time laid out like space:
Offering recurrent lives to correct eternal mistakes.
Under returning skies,
From the San Francisco Midwinter Fair Carnival,
Wovoka watched a first snowflake fall like a single leave,
And with the immunity of evening,
Knew he had missed the point