1068. The Promise We Live By - Simon J. Ortiz

On the West Coast, days of rainstorm wrestle
the Coast Range, their wet fury driven landward.
We never quite know what the sky promises,
and there is certain assurance in that fate.
It is for that we wait. We’ve already weathered
more than promises. They’ve passed us by.
So I’m not sure this morning when I step outside,
and suddenly it’s not winter anymore but some
warm mask that molds the contours of my face
with unbidden warmth. It’s almost unnatural
but I hope not, having already found reliable
the promise of loss. My expectation is unfulfilled.



Somewhere within the universe of the prairie hills
is a climate that is yet unnoticed, and from it
is welling a warm rupture of another sure season.
Believe it is not unusual, I urge myself
whose myths are always changing in the light.
So it’s this we arrive into daily, always
another season, warm or frigid, and it’s we
who wage weather within our furious spirits.



Tomorrow’s dawn is a promise that will fulfill.
Never mind if the sky does not quite agre