Steinke's Indian Maiden

      
Steinke’s Indian Maiden


        Steinke’s maiden stares at the smug faces of suitors
a gentle mind; she smiles through eyes

         the shape of almonds, oval, mysterious
enough to contain the secrets of grandmothers

        who simplify tradition, crafted into artistry
for artistry’s sake, focused to foreground or blurred,

        unique, as though  the painter’s brush so hypnotized
by light the folklore has burnished into canvas, and left a mark

         multiplied by generations of ancients that haunt
the minds of youth by likeness, the way the mirror shows likeness

        in the face, the way the eye usually traces
ancestral visages in reverse, a twinning effect

        that shadows, shooting black rays like arrows
into the pliable cerebral cortex; it demands

        a context, the context of culture, that we may peer inside
the maiden’s throbbing heart, her traditions, carefully nurtured

        like eaglets flying high and low with the elevations
of current blowing into every feather

        of the wing, infused  with renewed energy, so that the now
reflects the regenerations, like a tracing of a portal in a pond.