Upon the worn trails of down trodden souls,
The fool, the sinner and the hopeful leave their woes.

On the path of salvation when many lost their way,
Other paths start to branch away.

A conestoga lays abandoned on the trail,
Where many idealists withered and failed.

The industrial city left behind in the dust filled wake,
No turning back from the journey,
You already chose your fate.

Where would you go in the months and weeks ahead?
Possibly to new Zion or make your own land to think that you'll be well on.

Beware of the adventure who is a fool to travel along,
So always journey together or die without a throne.

The creek partitioned the fertile lowland
The river-road split the pasture land above
The Conestoga linked the east with their western kin
But the railroad divided men by the color of their skin

Walking the ruts on the Historic
Santiam Wagon Trail, I split
the stories of sky scraping
Douglas firs.  Alders and vine maple shed
their leafy weight of early Fall.

The brown state attraction sign boasts
a sincere Conestoga.   A sturdy team
in a purposeful westward arch.  What
benign heroic ambition.  Divine inevitability.

Small pox.
Wounded Knee.
Boarding schools.

I wonder how the sign sits in the eyes
of a Kalapooya walking these woods.  Or
a Nez Perce or Siletz?

Like a ******* in Tel Aviv?  A machete
in Kigali?

But the Siletz don’t have an air force
or UN peace keeping troops.