Poem: “Return to Mankiller Flats, Oklahoma”

                                                  for Cherokee Chief Wilma Mankiller

Another Trail of Tears,

from our Adair, Oklahoma farm to San Francisco,

moving us again, to live in a hotel

and work in a strange land.

–

Objects of the blue-veined are foreign to native hands,

telephones and elevators, skates and hula hoops and the TV.

My sister and I read aloud, imitating sounds of those who fit,

becoming fluent in the San Franciscan tongue.

–

The memories of pie suppers, my mother’s garden,

the ever present stranger in greater need

whom Dad would bring home,

now provide my direction on the return trail.

–

There have been other trails, of broken bones

And lifeless limbs, ones of crutches and determination,

others lining the heart, wrapped and suspended between trees.

–

Further trails of tears, bleached by erosion

from white-eyed stares, once inroads forged by Cherokee women

who ruled the tribe before our traditions

were blanched along the way.

–

On this land, still marked with familiar footprints, I return

to fight a war, not on the battlefield but in the empty pockets

and bellies of those whose spirits walked before.