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		Sky Told Him		contents
		by Robert Gibbons
		Transported by more than public transportation, when with three bags of mine hanging from the wrought-iron fence surrounding the library parking lot on Elm across from the so-called bus station, which is nothing more than a sidewalk, a few awnings, along with posted schedules, & ludicrous maps, I hear, "Are all those bags yours?" "Yes, they are," I answered the guy with the long, jet-black hair & whitest of white women on his arm. "Are you an American?" he asked, responding to my nonchalant, unintimidated smile. "Yes," I answered, not yet getting the full nature of his query. "I knew it as soon as I saw you, something in the sky," pointing & looking upward, "told me we were brothers. I'm a full- blown Navajo, my father is a [Navajo word for it] you know, medicine man." Whereupon he gave me the arm & arm handshake, & hug. "I'm a poet," I told him, "which is why we're brothers. What's your name?" which he told me in English, then Navajo. Every time he spoke in that language, what with his proclaiming that the sky told him we were brothers, I seemed to understand the words: the awe & authenticity. "I'm going to give you a copy of my book," which while I dug into the black canvas shoulder bag, he says, pointing to her, "That's Josie, you know, from The Outlaw Josie Wales." "Sure, I was just writing about the time I saw it at the 1994 Cannes Film Festival, just finished the piece today." He believed me, for the most part, but you know how things are on the street, so he told me they call him, "Chief" on the street, & of course, she was skeptical as hell, until I signed the book, & handing it over she asked my name. He pointed to the cover, reading it aloud at the same time I answered, grounding the three of us, & sending some sort of previously unheard, or newly resurrected chant + tonal caesura in the look the three of us shared, before they headed up toward the wilderness of Congress Street .
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