In the Forest of the Wendigo

Barbara A. Holland and I both wrote poems about The Wendigo, the terrifying wind elemental known to all the Native Americans from Canada all the way down through Pennsylvania and Ohio. In Holland's notebooks, amid sketches for her Wendigo poems, I found three short poems in which expressed her profound fear of the American woods. I revised them slightly and combined them into this little suite.

IN THE FOREST OF THE WENDIGO

by Barbara A. Holland

1. LOST

The long-house has wandered off
somewhere and I am left behind
to find it. The stars stick in the branches
of the highest trees that have no green
save at the top of the naked trunks.

Beneath the slip-slide footing
of pine needles, something way down
rumbles and shakes the ground
with muttering scarce-heard. I feel it
in my bones. I wonder
if on some far-off island
they are dying, or shouts
of warning rise to the clouds.

The web of a spider
burns my face. Whiskers
of fog feel out for me.

2. THE SECRET

A glade. An opening in the woods
where anything might happen.
Now the forest wakes. The grasses
cease to move. The bushes liberate
their hoarded twittering. The bull frogs
stop their vocalise, but yet
the moss invites me a lie down,
while the trees part in anticipation
of I know not what.
                                     I run and run
until I am exhausted. The forest
can keep its secret.
I shall not intrude on what
it may or may not foster.

3. IN THE DEEP WOODS

When I hear the ground
crunching followed by the sound
of bells, I know that he
is nor far off, that monstrous, tall
hunter in whose ear Hiawatha
rode; that behind a clump of trees
his laughter wobbles the juniper
and soars to a mighty screech,

that I had best be going home.
I do not care to have him
swing downward with his tomahawk.

These woods are treacherous
with spirits. I must not look
nor to the right or left but keep on going.
He is laughing
at the death that fouls our waters,
above the earth that is poisoned
     by the same stuff,
giving bad breath to his laughter,
our self-inflicted hatchet-thrust
the destruction of our woods.