Ancestors Poem by John Parsons

I sit on a luxurious leather couch
It is smooth, but the material
Is essentially rough.

It has adapted
To humanity's needs
Much like how I've

Changed my energy,
But not my essence
To get along with the world here.

Like my Cherokee and Comanche
Ancestors. They had to survive a foreign
Culture trying to eradicate their own with plagues, guns

And everything else
In an executioner's bag.

For me, though
It's not an American settler I have to resist,
It is the narrow-minded.

(15 June 2008)
(Justin, Texas