STIRRING
Úthi gáhi
‘Do not go at this thing like you were riding a swift horse, but hold up a little.’
Quanah Parker, Comanche, 1892
It was early dawn when Big Horse snorted in all his importance
and blew the crowds back.
He curled his neck, looked down his nose at them.
He danced in circles, arching left and right, rolling his eyes back
and bending to check what followed behind.
His high prancing shook the ground beneath him.
Ears Up circled him, keeping small children out from under foot.
When they arrived at the council fire, a warbling crescendo announced them.
Big Horse Woman felt the people stirring.
She heard the wails of mourning, for another son lost…
One of Kíka Tónga’s comrades had not survived an arrow wound.
She felt rage under their skin.
But she did not know why all they could think of was more fighting.
In her heart, what she yearned for was quiet.
It was only there that, eventually, she found answers.
She was not the only one who saw the unbalance coming,
who knew this was the beginning of a great tide and turning,
who knew the earth was vulnerably rolling,
and that each of their lives had, that fevered summer, become twice as valuable.
They all knew that they held the seed of their People.
They all knew that from here forward,
they should take care in self preservation.
They must save the seeds they were, for future planting.
Thus Big Horse Woman spoke.
She discouraged all cries for further battles.
She encouraged them to stay firmly together,
not separate, or divide, as waves of change passed through them.
She warned her People of the brutal winds and droughts that would come
in the wake of twisting sand storms and prairie fires.
That if they were ripped from their ground, again,
they should not get ripped apart.
Crowds and fires would try to wipe them from the earth, she warned them.
But instead, she said, they should grow strong in their roots,
cling hard beneath the blowing crust of dirt.
Their roots must stretch like runners, so as not to be severed, tapping deeper,
spreading wider, so they could never be completely pulled up.
They must take hold – in every crack, creep through dark and under rock.
Though their hearts, in pieces broken, be buried, deep in their chests,
they must hold with all their will to the roots of themselves.
The Roots of Being on Earth.
She told them that, only then, would they be safe, woven deep –
until steady rains fell, on dormant seeds,
planted deep, within the womb of earth.
Stretching roots to the past and future,
they would be safe.
Like the mole- though the way ahead be blinded- they would dig in.
They would hide within the secrets that their ways were.
They would hold onto themselves.
They would become ghosts,
not afraid of long silence.
She pictured it with her words
until they all saw it with their own eyes.
Only then
did she lower her hands.