The Land We Dreamed: Poems

On the Ohio

45 On the Ohio Wabete, 1756 I am in the canoe with my father again, after Monongahela where Braddock died, he who said No savage should inherit the land. I do not yet know my father will die at Brushy Run where blood ran white and red. He motions me ashore to tie the canoe. The bank is steep, a smooth gray stone. I climb until he is lost in a rising mist. I climb as a squirrel climbs into a narrow crevice wet with seeping water. Suddenly I am on a high bluff. 46 The rope is in my hand but the canoe is gone and the river’s rush is silent. My mother who died of smallpox sits on a rock nearby scratching a turtle in the stone. How did you get here, I ask, where’s Father? She points to the turtle she draws. Look for him when the sun warms the stones at noon, after the flood has settled its bones. I see nothing. The crow calls in the forest. He has made me like himself. The lonely crow has made me like him- 47 self. I am bound to the rock by the harsh song of her scratching. ...