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The Earth Forgets
they buried their elders by firs and pines,
but the good earth has sucked back their bones,
washed the soil clean.
they imagined they could pierce the sky
and reach their ancestors.
fly with birds who lent them wings.
once they were horse men
yet they kneeled to crows.
they who came from the umbilical cord
of the Earth, from the lap of Mother.
they painted portraits on river rocks,
faces that spied the landscape,
that acted as ghost cries to spirits,
asking for protection.
they gathered with fiery drums
when they retrieved their harvest.
their body, their fingers played
while nearby blades of grass sang.
with prayer feathers, feasts and dances
they laid flat in the lowlands
thirsting for their roots.
they who rode the sacred groves,
wandered into deep Oregon valleys,
across the fertile lands,
and into the craggy Steens and Wallowas.
the vast lands have forgotten them.
today the land touts big houses,
the clawing fingers of timber yards,
glass factories,
cowherds, industrial stacks,
asphalt roads, restaurants, and hotels.
rivers host jetboats.
ski lodges offer up hot toddies.
Earth forgets with ease.
auctions off sorrow for so little.
but for these first peoples,
they know their march.
their weave of spirit is inside the earth.
they know the meadowed land,
the sacred plants, the granite gardens.
they hear the voices of their long gone elders
when their feet breathe into the ground.
the vast lands have forgotten them,
though they not the land.
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