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.

The Pine Forest Calls Me

I remember how it has grown these years.
Yet the spring pinecones are still young,
soft and gentle as skin to the touch.
It is always the green season here, even with future amber
formed golden from bark
with the scent of animal life that passed through.
If a traveler should pass by, it summons,
Stop, come in, stay.
I remember one poet taking a branch of pine
from the winter forest to his dying sister.
It was all she wanted in her last moment.
I have never forgotten the snow dripping
from that branch to the floor.
It is what I want, too,
not so much to have a branch taken away,
but for myself to be taken to this world 

my own life passed through as it does now in the shadows
where sun filters in
to melt snow, quench earth,
that water dripping from trees.
You smell it, too, so let’s remain a while in its shade.
How I love this forest,
where the hieroglyphs of insects
work the inner layers of bark
like monks writing unseen in deep silence,
and if you know the true secret of falling
you might summon that magic language.
I know prayers rise with smoke
the way some people
are so perfectly uplifted
from their first roots.
But when this life of trying is finally over,
bring to my bed a small branch
smelling of green forest,
the melting pure water of snow,
these mysteries discovered
one more time.



--Linda Hogan (1947- ) Chickasaw poet, teacher, novelist, and environmentalist, Writer in Residence of the Chickasaw Nation, from A History of Kindness