Fran Dancing Feather

“When the old feather pen dances on the paper, it is sacred. Write and be the feather that dances. You are Dancing Feather!” said the elder.

I couldn’t read or write until I was in my thirties. After returning to school as an adult I discovered that I loved to write. I stayed in school until I graduated college with my Bachelors Degree. The first poem I published was entitled “Earth’s Shadows”. It appeared in a book by Rita Robinson called “Center of the World” in 1992. The poem was written as the result of a vision I had about a renewal of native culture and spirituality that comes after a devastating socioeconomic disaster. “Crumbling the great towers to the dusty ground” was the line in that poem that marked the change about to occur in our world. Nine years after the vision was published, we all watched in horror as the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center changed our lives forever.

“Translate our native language and culture into English.” said my Grandfather. “Tell the story of our relationship with the earth, the sky and all of nature.”