Oak Mountain Echoes

Great-Great Grandfather’s Ghost
(Geronimo Speaks)
Some say this life was bad,
but next time will be better.
I hear Goyath-lay answer:

Maybe last time was better
than any time to come.
Last time we had the land
and freedom to fight for it.
I was a medicine man;
no bullet could kill my body.
The nature of my power
caused me to live too long,
but that was my destiny;
most of us were free,
free to defend our homes,
free to die young with honor.
The best time we could know
is now our history;
the land was alive, and we
were living parts of it.
When they started killing the land,
we did not fight hard enough,
we did not mourn long enough,
though we were the casualties--
first the buffalo, then the people.
Many died young with honor;
the rest of us now are strangers
in the land the Great Spirit made
and gave to our ancestors.
I think they have killed the land
already, and a few buffalo
and a few of our people survive,
only as ghosts and shadows.

Page 16 (copyright 2001 Joanne R. Cage)

2nd prize, State contest, 1996.

***

"I was born on the prairies
where the wind blew free
and there was nothing
to break the light of the sun."

--Goyath-lay