Scarlet Paintbrush
A poem by Garrett Hongo.
Castilleja miniata grows in dry marshes, open woods, and meadows
In a range from Northern California through Eastern Oregon and the Cascades.
My cousin, just married, came upon a field of them while hiking around Mt. Rainier.
She posted a selfie on Facebook, she and her husband both ruddy-cheeked,
Facing a brisk wind, their hair tousled, making whips like florets of paintbrush
Dancing around coronas of pure happiness visited upon them by the Everlasting.
And, one summer, I saw a field of paintbrush bent by a flat heel of wind
Sent from a black thunderhead scudding over Fish Lake near McKenzie Bridge.
They are alive in memory from when I drove to my brother’s summer camp
On the southeastern edge of Mono Lake where he trained his string of birddogs.
There were patches of paintbrush popping up along a streambed, dandles of red
Rising from dry ground, surrounded by salt beds, tufa, and black lava sands.
In 1944, internees at Tule Lake gathered the blossoms to pound into paste,
A dye they mixed in chawan for painting flowers on burlap they’d scrounged
To make humble sleeves for chopsticks they’d fashioned from scrap pine,
A decorous touch at mealtimes while incarcerated during World War II.
Did Uncle Mas tell me this? At 95, the last time he’d visited? Away at college
In Stockton when war broke, he got rounded up by Executive Order 9066.
Over a century ago, in 1873, a shaman made a like paste from paintbrush blooms
To dye the red tule rope he wove for a sacred circle around the Ghost Dance
Of 52 warriors who would make their stand against 400 U.S. soldiers
And cavalry sent to remove the Modoc from the lava beds of their native land.
The rope was said to make them invisible, that their dancing would overturn
The Universe, exiling the whites, restoring a people to where they belonged.
The next morning, a thick tule fog rose from the land, engulfing the crags and trenches
Of the stronghold where the warriors hid, making their movements invisible.
After many days, the Modoc were victorious, the soldiers and cavalry rebuffed,
But more came and the medicine of the paintbrush faded, four Modoc were hanged,
And the rest removed to reservations in Oregon and Oklahoma, a scattered people.
My friend, their descendant, retold this story on my deck in back of my house,
Invoking the fragile promise of protection by the paintbrush, the sleevelike florets
Of them inviolate in memory like monks gently genuflecting toward the West
Through the firedamp of grey air and the final smudge of scarlet that was the sun.
Garrett Hongo is the author of five books of poetry and nonfiction, the most recent of which is The Perfect Sound: A Memoir in Stereo. His honors include fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts and the Rockefeller Foundation. In 2022, he received the Aiken Taylor Award for Modern American Poetry from The Sewanee Review. We welcome reader letters. Email High Country News at [email protected] or submit a letter to the editor. See our letters to the editor policy.
