Mary Doublehead McNulty

I can go
Days without any water
I can go days without any food
But I can also die
So easily
Like my mother did when I was two

I can easily be adopted
Walk the trail alone
Til I find somewhere
With someone with extra
Someone kind
Someone warm
To lie down with
And make it through
The cold crying winter

But I didn't cry that hour
That day
So it's not The Trail of Tears to me
It's just a way
A way of life
A way of my DNA

Maybe I'm lucky that I never remembered
The big wooden house
Chinked with clay
Where mama cooked beef
And vegetables from the big barn
Where our dried food
And horses stayed
And the wagon
Her grandfather built
When we, the human beings, lived in peace

Before the lawyers and anti-humans
Wrote many words and debated them
Although they were all on the same side
They colluded to make it look justified
The decision to send the soldiers to enforce
The belief that because Europe had "discovered" America,
(Even though we had lived there generations before)
The men took our land
They took our houses
The soldiers walked through and took our best things
With only a nod of a judge to approve
We were deemed tenants
And evicted and marched
A long way a way

But maybe I'm lucky
For I understand
How temporal is
All that you can see
And how you will also take nothing with you
When you begin your march
Toward the Pleiades

And so maybe I will leave easily too
From this establishment
For I can eat one slice of white bread
And have dysentery for seven generations
And die easily
Like my mother did
When I was two

-jenn