Leonard Peltier INMATE NUMBER 89637-132

"In the Shadowed Night."
Sometimes in the shadowed night I become spirit.
The walls, the bars, the gratings dissolve into light
and I unloosen my soul
and fly through the inner darkness of my being.
I become transparent,
a bright shadow,
a bird of dreams singing from the tree of life.
"The Knife of My Mind"
I have no presence.
I have only a past
and, perhaps, a future.
The presence has been taken from me.
I’m left in an empty space whose darkness
I carve at with the knife of my mind.
I must carve myself anew
out of the razor-wire nothingness.
I will know the ecstasy
and the pain
of freedom.
I will be ordinary again.
Yes, ordinary,
that terrifying condition,
where all is possibility,
where the presence exists and must be faced.