Blood Run

Memory Wearing white mourning paint powdered from pink granite weathered light as crusted snow. For prayer, song, story-life. Laying out our world in shapings, come Cohokia. Planting three sisters-Corn, Squash, Beans- circling each mound in retrospect-dancing, drumming. Marking our bird-print presence. Buffalo marks on Pipestone Tablets, on boulder stone, on the belly of the earth, on every raised ridge, seasonal hide, come winter. Fortification? Hardly from human. Mere walls honor cyclic astral events, bring whereabouts, announce our city's welcoming-honor patrons-Puma, Thunder, Snake! Ho-Chunk, Missouria, Ioway, Otoe, Quapaw began what Omaha, Ponca, Kansa, Osage joined. The Honga. Soon Arikara, Cheyenne, Dakota as well, negotiating trade, camaraderie, or not. Millennia ago we initiated young here. Until strangeness, disease, danger encroached upon us. Ten thousand strong then, this city invoking ceremony, ceremonial chance, feasts filling significant days, nights. The winds winding each of the hundreds of hills raised, revered by man under the glory.