The Land We Dreamed: Poems

What He Found

39 What He Found not wilderness or empty space Eskippakithicki blue lick last Shawnee place 3000 acres shaped by buffalo and people on the Great Warrior’s Trace cabins palisaded near the cleanly flowing creek fields of squash and corn Ottawa and Miami Illinois and Lenape Piqua and Shawnee coming and going from raids or hunts squatting to smoke women working fields stoking cooking fires skinning gutting game smell of smoke carcasses scalps hides drying by fires 40 licks bringing buffalo shouldering shoving over salty ground buffalo heavy bodies threshing lush fields of grass shoulder-high wide-racked elk clattering stomping in hollow cane bears bloated bullies stained with blackberries standing snorting deer traveling narrow secret lanes in sumac cedar and sassafras pigeons heavy at roost mourning at daylight and heat of noon turkeys barnyard geese dissolving in woods along the creek fish in schools perfect selves in warm shallow pools 41 catfish yellow and horned hiding in hinges layered limestone shelves herons long blue needles searching the stream’s floating trash elm’s fine architecture honeysuckle bound locust restless lakes of cane white oak black walnut silver beech red maple black cherry blue ash Eskippakithicki, a pause, a brief parenthesis between the hill and creek ...