This is no forest primeval: Badlands, Black Hills, a month
beyond the Pine Ridge tragedy. Arroyo clefts, a moon of popping trees.
Shush now. Velvet amaranth of Spring is on the way. In rivulets,
just cold pastoral, a fog's memory of 1890. Shoshoni ponies.
Sheep sorrel, shacklebone wrists up-twisted, black ice
after bloody mud and blizzard, the two-dollar cleanup later.
Remington was there for Harper's, along with Gatling guns,
relic hunters, government draymen, to document this last
resistance to the dog-faced whites. Could have been shittimwood,
savior Christ in a bullet-proof ghost dance weasel shirt, voices
of the eld Wovoka up from mid-Nevada. Beef issue day:
gut-whet curlicues of smoke from Mousseau's kitchen
chimney. In the bed of the lead wagon, chief Big Foot spits
up bile of the Minneconjou Sioux. Blanket of white atuft
the tundra: Grabill shoots an exodus dressing for more winter.
Soon it's 1973 and the FBI takes aim at AIM and fires again.
World Famous Indian Village--shacks and too much corn gin.
The aftermath of both is now, seen in the serene scene between
the creeks of Porcupine and Wounded Knee. Episcopal church
still hospital? Stone in-dwelling Inyan. Scrofula caused by gophers.
Beyond the breastworks of the cavalry, resistance of the ice is shale.