Ishi
The Story of a Wild Indian in America
Hand, Tooth, Nail, October 2005
detecting history in the park
hearing it through delicate earphones
his dark fingernails looking for pioneers
what do you find? coins, buttons, bullets, crude tools.
coins, buttons, bells-broken things-broken...striking workers,
volunteers, draftees, men walking to work women working
all the woodpiles all the mud.
Somehow everyone ends up together
-when the river gives
What's that in the mud you've made a little hole you're watching
the city through a hole in the ground you're backtracking
You've more or less gone ass-up to the latest presidential address
language can be heard dying in the air
What can you hear? the code of beep or no beep
yes or no yes or no
When a television comes into view I don't know
maybe the ball game maybe a short battle
maybe an embarassing celebrity moment
maybe a few hours of reruns...
what do you see in that hole after all, the Spanish American war
is in there booming up San Juan hill in tight pants and gaiters
yelling bully!
Spanish American war living on bacon and beans polishing bayonets
playing cards
waxing goatees
drinking battlefield gin
1905 world series in there ducking a fastball
Communist party in there becoming a footnote
Monroe Doctrine in there.Great Society in there...Great Depression in there
Vietnam war in there, parked its corvette and let its girlfriend have the keys
sat in that mud praying
right there...down in that little hole, chipping your fingernails
pulling out collar-bones, pulling up steamships, discovering
where the widow put the bottle, where the preacher put the glove
what do you find in that hole, while the language itself is torn
like a bit bull and thrown
like a drunken cowboy
broken bones, complicated fractures of the funny bone
as you lie there sagging in drink years later
saying over and over what the river gives
its all in that hole, Philadelphia dollars and St Joe horseshoes
lying there curled like signals in the mud
you can see the whole west carved up on a map
and maybe one lone Indian, one complete renegade
living alone in the Yuba river canyon.
Published by Crawdad Nelson
I'm a student, journalist, naturalist and forager. I've worked in a variety of occupations, from greenchain puller to small magazine editor, sometimes more than one at a time. View profile
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