Perhaps A Shawnee Unemployed One Winter Poem by Bernard Henrie

Before the whites arrived in Kansas City
and their barbecue smoke climbed like a vine,
a Wyandot or maybe a bundled Pottawatomie,
perhaps a Shawnee unemployed one winter
gawked into blackness unable to read his tarot,
unable to read the stars and foretell the future,
or see any farther than I see from a jet window;
lights below scattered as cheerless signal fires
and isolated sentinels where my sallow days
run in a flat gallop beside your speeding life;
gruff days opening before me like armed settlers
pulled by western light and following each other
as bison follow in winter storms and as I follow
the bidden berry of your tongue.