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MY EKPHRASIS POEM BASED ON THE PAINTING “SPOTTED DOG AND HIS RIDE” – BY JESSE T. HUMMINGBIRD
Original Publication Date: SEPTEMBER 29, 2020
Twilight distant Universe
Time is not linear
Past is the future
No assimilation without
Technology and greenbacks
Uranium, gold, oil, radioactive waste, lies, lies, LIES
The new gods
Uncle
Riding the future's stallion
Named after the old ones
That Columbus thought were selling spices and silks
Greed
horse used to suffice
Now one has many horses
Horsepower still counted
Like grains of sand
Waiting for something to shift the weight
Of the harried bubble of blue
We as fish in a bowl
Watching ourselves taking turns floating upside down to the top
Stream and lake and grass and tree and wind
Speak
Turning the world on a dime, waiting for that time in the sun
Coyote watches Wolf watches the road to oblivion
Silent they creep across the dreams of the sleepy and the dead
Looking for that red road and only finding blue sands and black sky and following that
blood red trail to their great great great great great great great
grandchildren's cries of torment in the future meat grinder of broken treaties, alcohol, car
wrecks and suicide
children who cry in a foreign tongue, the enemy's language
prayers to a God that Spotted Dog does not Know... forgotten songs... forgotten
remember
Remember? (The future calls the old ones to whisper)
Whisperings like the roar of the bikes engine
Drum beats and blood memory
The blood remembers
The children speak
Aaniin Hau Tansi She:koli Kwe Kwe a thousand greetings float up to greet this ancient
rider
The children set out their food and tobacco and greet this grandfather Spotted Dog and
thank him for remembering for visiting for whispering
Grandfather revved the engine of his Indian Ride
Drumbeats pound out of his engine
Old Songs float out of his exhaust
Spreading across the earth
Like Daybreak woman dances across the morning sky
and the children danced
and they danced and they danced and let the water out of the fishbowl
they threw out the greed, the technology of genocide
And
Sang the future
Sand the past
Remembered the stories the
heartbeat of our Mother,
Earth
Mother of us all
copyright Melanie S. Fish 9-24-2005
I thought this would be something good to post this evening. I wrote this poem back in college in 2005. What it talks about is as relevant as ever.
As we watch the debates on tv this evening, remember that we vote for our children's children's children.