bury my heart at wounded knee

i don't want to sound like a broken record 

maybe i need a more creative way to tell this story

but from wind river canyon (shoshone land) and tensleep

rocks from the cambrian, precambrian, triassic periods

from thermopolis, the famous hot springs sold to congress in 1897 by chief washakie,

with the one caveat that 1/4 of the springs be always reserved for public use

(congress had been pressuring the tribes to sell for years, you know)

from the black hills carved with those four leaders (but whose leaders?  who?) 

to that towering deviled rock, rising 1280 feet off the high plains

from the bighorns to buffalo

and keyhole to custer (are we really still naming things for this man?)

i hear faint voices in the breeze, and i join in, bewildered, ashamed

this land is my land, this land is your land

well i don't know much about forced migration, gentrification, 

measles and casinos and drug cartels 

the manifold ways in which debt is atoned for, or forgotten

after all, who owns the colorado river?

but my heart aches for the blood in the soil,

the scarlet that stains my feet seeping up from our given, good earth