Our people were traders,
spinning buffalo hair into fine golden threads
after the time we lived with few bison.
We wove hemp from our trades
and carved shell from the Gulf,
worked copper from the north
shine of the river.
We followed the curve of land,
knowing the trees that grew
in each place,
wandering the earth paths
we came from
the way
water threads through this world
between hills to round a bend
and cross into other waters.
And there is the present
when we make our lives,
spinning together the threads of historical disaster
into something new,
that thread once spun
by rubbing wool against the thigh
to make a fine strand
because we learned to make a way
from anything, in any place.
traveling, and change,
but always the many paths to the river
that began far off as a single spring,
and still we made a warm shawl,
remembering the bison,
its fur, like us now, not of our place.
We always make do,
and when there is nothing else to weave together we find the
heart and her words,
the veins of the body, the memory paths of the mind,
anything we need
to make a story or a song.