OLD AMERICA IN ANTIC SHROUD
The Native Americans This place was a haven of cooing birds that celebrate in the trees That dance and flutter with the leaves and flowers in the wind on summer evenings. Bonfires revealed the copper figures and faces of half-clad Cherokee children And women in camps of extended families celebrating the harvests of corn and squash and beans With roasted deer meats, their husbands had killed. My grandparents crossed the waters in slanted boats of logs to till this land, And here we lived in peace with the Iroquois and the Sioux Until the ships that carried people with cotton skin and yellow silky hair landed on our shores, Eyes as green and blue as the oceans on sunny days. They offered them mats to sleep, water to bath, wild turkeys and pig meats And deers and bears and glasses of beers brewed from barley and squash As their culture demand. But they infect them with diseases to reciprocate their kind gestures. And today the history books read 'Columbus discovered...