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

Our Lord of rood healed not the blood-engorged hemorrhoid ridges
of the sea-hunting reprobate operating unilaterally as Lloyd Bridges
who slurped rancid-cheese-rendered-runny dribble to avoid wedges
that'd stampede the intestines like a Conestoga of Bill Boyd sledges

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.

You were unburied
10 years before I was born,
pulled from the Arie riverbed  
the day Nagasaki burned.
You died like a samurai
in your daughter’s arms,
bowels flowing,
head severed cleanly,
falling to the water
amidst the silence
of dead human trees
with their bark skin turned inside out,
among the screams of the living
realizing that not even water
can stop their burning away.

You were unburied
65 years before I was born,
killed by the big guns
with Conestoga wheels in the
ravine near Wounded Knee Creek.
You died running with your nursing infant
in your arms trying to touch the flag of truce,
your child still suckling long after
the Great Spirits call—  still suckling
as you were piled in the mounds
of mothers with no ghost shirts.
Others children’s children still
Ghost Dance and tell your lore.

You were buried
32 years before I was born,
shot in the back after
you had dug your own grave.
Shot in the back after
you had watched your house
burn in a kerosene blaze.
Shot in the back after
you knew the children
were safe in the swamp.
Shot in the back after
all of Rosewood burned
from the fury of white rage.
Shot in the back
until you were erased
from existence
except in the memory of tears.

What am I meant to do?
It’s summer and the
magnolias are blooming,
the cherry blossoms are ripe,
the black hills spruce
admits its forever mildew stink,
reminding harvesters not to
ever make it a Christmas tree.

I call out not knowing your names,
giving you invisible ones
that will reflect your death and life.

What am I meant to do?
Your unburied ash, spirit,
your buried charred bones
exists in wretched longing,
your names bleed into
the riverbed, the ravine, the clay.
I mourn as I freely travel the spaces
that others had trampled over you.

What am I meant to do?

I just put new shoes & sox on my horse. My wife, Becky, cooked a big pizza for me which I ate a few minutes ago. It was pretty good. Becky said that her sister Ruth would be arriving tomorrow in a Conestoga wagon. We had lots of pizza in the root cellar to feed Ruth who was very fat. Her son Reuben was a tall fellow who had been a cowboy, just like me, for a long time. Sometimes we would tell cowboy stories for hours just for fun.

Our Lord of rood healed not the blood-engorged hemorrhoid ridges
of the sea-hunting reprobate operating unilaterally as Lloyd Bridges
who slurped rancid-cheese-rendered-runny dribble to avoid wedges
that'd stampede the intestines like a Conestoga of Bill Boyd sledges
that'll forevermore precipitate an impending bowel-evacuation burn
divorced from cat fleas on a dog's tail that cannot be taught to learn
the difference 'tween The Ray Conniff Singers & a conifer or a fern
or why romantic love with prisoners is often more tender than stern
under Allah's clear moon on an Earth without rotational spin & turn
under Islam's see-through moon on an Earth lacking all spin & turn

I just put new shoes & sox on my horse. My wife, Becky, cooked a big pizza for me which I ate a few minutes ago. It was pretty good. Becky said that her sister Ruth would be arriving tomorrow in a Conestoga wagon. We had lots of pizza in the root cellar to feed Ruth who was very fat. Her son Reuben was a tall fellow who had been a cowboy, just like me, for a long time. Sometimes we would tell cowboy stories for hours just for fun.

I just put new shoes & sox on my horse. My wife, Becky, cooked a big pizza for me which I ate a few minutes ago. It was pretty good. Becky said that her sister Ruth would be arriving tomorrow in a Conestoga wagon. We had lots of pizza in the root cellar to feed Ruth who was very fat. Her son Reuben was a tall fellow who had been a cowboy, just like me, for a long time. Sometimes we would tell cowboy stories for hours just for fun.

I just put new shoes & sox on my horse. My wife, Becky, cooked a big pizza for me which I ate a few minutes ago. It was pretty good. Becky said that her sister Ruth would be arriving tomorrow in a Conestoga wagon. We had lots of pizza in the root cellar to feed Ruth who was very fat. Her son Reuben was a tall fellow who had been a cowboy, just like me, for a long time. Sometimes we would tell cowboy stories for hours just for fun.

I just put new shoes & sox on my horse. My wife, Becky, cooked a big pizza for me which I ate a few minutes ago. It was pretty good. Becky said that her sister Ruth would be arriving tomorrow in a Conestoga wagon. We had lots of pizza in the root cellar to feed Ruth who was very fat. Her son Reuben was a tall fellow who had been a cowboy, just like me, for a long time. Sometimes we would tell cowboy stories for hours just for fun.