Come, Wewoka
and The Diary of Medicine Flower
Edward C. Patterson
Dancaster Creative Writing
Smashwords Edition, May 2008
Copyright 2008 by Edward C. Patterson
All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in any form, in whole or in part (beyond that copying permitted by U.S. Copyright Law, Section 107, “fair use” in teaching or research. Section 108, certain library copying, or in published media by reviewers in limited excerpt), without written permission from the publisher.
Contents
Come, Wewoka:
Poems on the Trail of Tears
&
The Diary of Medicine Flower:
Cherokee Aphorisms
Come, Wewoka:
Poems on the Trail of Tears
Campfires Smolder
Campfires smolder,
Growing cold as night,
Enfolding the empty square,
Lost
to this trail of tears.
My
trail of tears.
Silently in the forest
A footfall
tells that they
Have crept away
Into time’s bower;
Into
tear’s brine,
Into the hearts of those who should know better;
Into my veins
A smoldering memory
To my campfire lit by
those footfalls in the quiet wood
So many miles from home.
Rusted Flint
Rusted flint
Searing still in my heart stream,
But long since set aside.
Calling bird
Singing now a hollow song,
Telling of
chicks new born,
And loves and fears heroes know,
Now smolder
in the distant plains,
Burning with the forever-flint
With no
bird to recall it to life,
Except the dust crow who waits by my
dying laughter
To mock me in my death.
Rusted
flint
Searing still in my heart stream,
Never to be set
side.
Burning.
Forever-flint.
City of the Cherokee
City of the
Cherokee
Swept in autumn’s gold.
Alive with commerce
old.
Wares bought;
Wares sold.
This great world was
never-ending,
As we were jealous not to barter for our
souls.
This great earth, at our city’s heart.
Autumn’s
gold covered ruddy loam;
Cotton’s loam.
Now, the curing loam
of my sweet city
Cries out to the U-ne-gas.
Come and
take hold,
And take heart and pity,
For gone is our gold
In
U-ne-gas’ cotton city.
Harvest Dances
Harvest
dances;
Ghosts in the mountains
Near the Lover’s Leap.
How
we wed the sky with our singing.
How we drank the corn wine with
laughter.
Now the U-ne-gas say:
We drink the sun no
more.
We make our wine with dust,
Dense as our mountain
haunt;
The mountains we now haunt.
Harvest dances are
shadows on U-ne-gas’ walls,
Mocking our laughter, our
corn-wine prayers,
Mocking the Tsa-la-gi in their
keep.
Mocking even the Lover’s Leap.
The Children Laugh Playing Poleball
The children
laugh
Playing pole ball in the plaza;
They fire life in the
great city.
Wewoka found a bear claw.
Cosawta caught a
starling.
But sewing and hunting ends.
Games the worldly
play.
Claws and starlings fire the sun
Spilling new
laughter on the plaza.
Everyone plays at pole ball
In every
stitch and shot.