I see you continue thinking I am moral.
You have compassion. It is just because
You know how much injustice exists in the world,
That my skin was the prison of their plenty, just property
All along and how could it not have come to this.
It’s true I am innocent of killing my children,
But I am not innocent
Of the death of my husband’s new wife.
In here, there are few windows,
Just the tiny one
The moon passes across
At times. She lays down her light on the floor
Only a moment
Before picking it up and leaving again.
They took the moon and sun away from me.
The moon changed the tides.
She changes even the rivers.
Some believe I am a political prisoner.
They stand outside the doors and call.
Others believe I killed my children.
Others know they were stoned by those large men who feared
A mixed-blood child would come to rule.
As for me now, it doesn’t matter that I am here.
I am from a world of secrets like prison doors
That never open.
I was the aftershock of history and colliding lands.
This is what happens to those like me.
White as the Milky Way at night,
The path souls travel, we call it.
White as the moon that visits now and then,
Or snow in the north I visited
So many years ago
As we traveled about, myself so in love
And I still feel the pain of an ordinary lover.
Worse, the pain a mother feels when she loses children
Is something that never stops beating the heart.
One man in another land said they could hear me crying
Far away. They came to ask if I would go away with them
Where I’d be safe. Safe from what? I asked,
So innocent then.
I felt only what American Horse said.
He said, I feel a wish to go out in the forest
And cover my head with a blanket
So that I can see no more
And have a chance to think over what I’ve seen.
Now at times I fold clothing in the laundry.
Savage me.
I fold it flat and creased and perfect.
And at night I cover my head
And think of what I’ve seen.
In here women cry in the night.
They talk in their sleep,
The forgotten ones
Falling as if there is no bottom to their fall.
In our stories, the world grew from songs and love.
Now I wake to find tears falling from my eyes.
How I want to go to a high place in the mountains
Or the water that is in my blood.
I want to go to the beautiful world
Where we loved even the spiders.
We had horses and knew where the wild birds nested.
I want just once more to see where our corn grew,
In the footprint of our ancestors.
They taught us about souls and prophets.
As for us, we had no word for soul
Because the whole earth is our soul.
We are children of water and light, earth and wind.
As for water, did I tell you I knew how to read it,
When to travel, how to move the canoe,
How to turn into the quiet places of trees in water
And silence deep in the soul.
Some nights, thinking of sea turtles and flying fish in silver waters,
I look through the wall
Out to where I know there is an ocean,
The Europeans did not know navigation.
They had to take homing birds
With them on ocean voyages
To find their way home,
While we traveled by the stars.
We are children of the sun, as well.
It was another of our ancestors.
Now I am chlorophyll
And so I also work in the spring garden.
I place the seeds and sing with them:
I change the light to something green with my hands.
I change the dark of earth to light of sky,
My hands in the earth, grateful hands
In their own world.
Here at night someone is always crying.
I think I told you that.
Sometimes from the geography of my aging heart,
I go to that person
By day and offer something to them,
A piece of chocolate that came from a package sealed
And not taken by any guards.
Sometimes, I give them earrings I have made.
Listen, do you hear those wings? A bird is here.
A nighthawk. No, not a bird.
What am I thinking?
It is the woman who always shuffles cards.
She shuffles and lays them out,
Then shuffles again.
She used to be a gambler.
She always won. She always won at cards
While I saw houses of them fall.