LITTLE CROW
Down by the Minnesota River
choked with fertilizer –
shallow brown water of
Traverse des Sioux. It was here
the white man stole the territory
with treaty signed in smoke
(fake handshake, mock
friendship). We didn’t mean it – sorry.
Eleven years later (1862)
starved, dispossessed
the scar broke open (led
by blue, reluctant Little Crow).
Extermination of the buffalo
echoed the reservation
camp. To build a nation
all these savages must go.
The lightweight arc of birch canoe
is like an eyebrow (wingbone
frame, sutured to one
Rose Island – lamp of Manitou).
We’re limping back to Providence.
The whole grotesquerie
of violence & perfidy
to be forgone (washed in the silence
of the sea). Down Mississippi way
you feel a salty shell wash
through fingers... an eyelash
leach one tear, slowly. Hey ey.
12.11.17
