She Thinks 1788 Poem by J.J. Bach

Women know pain
Their shared history since the primordial soup cooled
Sacajawea's mother knew it
But no one knows when
Shoshone had no numbers. No time
Newcomers supplied all that
Sacajawea lived. In a village
She must have known happiness and love
But she had to have a year. An age
History is silent on this. It doesn't know
The numbers are missing. A mystery
Charbonneau met her as a child
She gave birth to a child. Or two
And came to know a mother's pain
Maybe she cried out for her own mother
Only the stares of strange white men replied
In the middle of wide open history.