Why Write?

I write for you who have ceased to love,

you whose possessions steal your full attention.

I want to tell you what you’re missing— you, polishing coins in counting houses,

you, mistaking your spouses for certified public accountants.

Yes, you with the big bank roll, I want to catch you unaware, to remind you of the day 

you will die. Just as you were born. Naked. Naked you will be.

I write for you who love so much, you’ve given away everything, even your coat, 

the coat you might have rolled up to soften the hard pavement serving as bed tonight.

You, the thin one holding up that stained Starbucks cup, asking for spare change,

I will put in my dollar and a spare poem. You shall be clothed. Be clothed.

This is an emergency! The fire's going out.

I write for those who no longer love. 

Even so, I write for you who love so much

that the cinders of your full-burnt heart must be relit now by another heart’s fire.

I want to strike a match on any kindling you have left, my friend,

and no friend of mine. Lovers and unloving, I write for you.

You who have ceased to love, I must learn to read my words aloud to you,

for you won’t bother to read them. To you, they’re spare change—

You hold no cup to me, yours always so hollowly full—

too full for change.

I must shout until your ears ring with the need to hear 

how beloved you are. How beloved, how to be loved.

Copyright 2017 -- Claire Germain Nail

Treading air--Flowing Water

Leaves’ colors fade— 

their stems loosen hold. 

Birch and Maple will surrender gems. 

Youth rake up the treasures to burn.

Days shorten.

How do I move through my time, 

now that it's measured?

Somedays, the air thickens so,

I barely penetrate its velvet curtains.

I tread air like a Celtic totem— 

stumbling legs,

tree stumps; 

weary arms, 

leaden swords; 

my plodding feet, 

sarsen stone.

Teach me to swim, rapid river,

not the strokes that whiten waves,

but to float, flow, a fluid way to go, 

serene green around the boulders of these difficulties.

I’m searching a liquid philosophy, 

one to hold in cupped hands, 

and sip,

like water from an alpine spring, 

cold enough to take my breath away,

and return it to me after I drink,

refreshed.

@Copyright 2017 by Claire Germain Nail

Once a Blue Star

(Scroll down past each photo to read entire poem)

“Once a blue star fell onto this meadow, up there above the mothering stones,

where the stars settled in, took root, and flowered.

All sorts of stars: blue, rose, yellow—strange white stars, thornéd and swift—

now these earthly stars in Spring’s green sky.”

This is the story, the grandmother told the girl one afternoon around the cooking fire.

Two dark ponds, the grandchild’s solemn eyes lifted 

to view the cliffed horizon, the gathering grounds, Camassia.

“As each star fell, and flowers they became,

your great-grandmothers counted them,

asking, ‘Which of these flowers bring us food?”

And the Sky Mother taught that deep under the night-blue Camas,

where wide roots live, there is sustenance.

When the frosts end, and the blue star-flowering comes,

then we People know Our Mother is making quamash,

food for us, the Kalapuya, to dig for,

here by the falling river, here by the short-lived swales, 

here by the sleeping boulders, here by the standing stones.

The southwestern people have the Three Sisters:

Maize, Squash, and Beans—they tell their stories:

how the Three Princesses peered through a hole in the sky,

how they fell into the endless sea, made the earth,

took root, and fed their children.

We of the northwest have these fields, bright with fallen stars.

We heed the warning Coyote gave us. He said this:

'The roots of the blue stars, not the white, are safe to eat.

The white man’s rootlessness brings avarice, sickness and death;

so the white camas can kill with the poison in their roots.'

Yes, we know the trouble the whites bring.

What can we do, but carry on our fishing, hunting,

our gathering, and tell our grandmothers’ stories as long as we can?
The whites come just like falling stars, unbidden, endlessly.

There are so many of them, and we are now so few.

"Then, when twilight fell and indigo shadows deepened, 

grandmother combed the child’s hair, kissing the hillock of her brow, 
wrapping her in a Hudson Bay blanket bought with hides and furs.

The night’s mist chilled; hunger’s pang accompanied the damp.

Grandmother served up camas stew: the warmth of venison and stars.

Body and soul knit together one more day.

~Claire Germain Nail 2017

Authors Note: The color photos are of Camassia, a Nature Conservancy preserve, where you can view the Camassia in bloom (usually late March or early April) and the mothering stones. It is most likely a place where the Kalapuya came to gather their food, the root of the blue camas flower, which is said to taste like a cross between an onion and a potato.