Embodied

I am embodied first by the numbers
given my grandparents
as, trembling, they signed the Dawes Act.
Outside under the moving night sky
I wonder
what it is to be made of this continent
from the beginning.
I came from the salt and water of those before me
before the creation of zero,
and then those numbers given my grandparents
by the American government
and names that belonged to others.
The past we have not forgotten.
They said you only pass on the people’s story
by telling it. You keep it by giving
it away. So I do.
For children of this land,
yesterday is close as today.
It’s why I know the forest south of here,
hickory cream and seeds for trade.
I labor daily here with the other descendants
of the pyramid builders of this continent,
pyramids greater than those of Egypt
and unknown, some already destroyed,
by the Americans.
I am one of the Indian Horse people
alive since the last standing treaty.
We are not yet the end of this line.
I am not yet the end of their plans.
And still the standing equines
hiding in the rich forest, swimming our rivers,
all so alive they breathe
for us, and two share the love,
embodied this way, water and blood,
knowledge passing between.
Once I was told you become what you think
so I think the gone animals back,
the ivory billed woodpecker,
the river of sharp teeth,
swimming black turtles shining,
all that fell from this life
I name Whole.

-- Linda Hogan (1947- ) Chickasaw poet, teacher, novelist, environmentalist, teacher, and Writer in Residence of the Chickasaw Nation, from A History of Kindness (pp. 26-27), 2020, Torrey House Press.