Early American Annals

Less is more, we all know.
That’s why we languish
outside the gate.

Here are the horses
promised us for rain,
bareback and unbroken.

I said to you I need
to love you before the storm.
Did we have our way?

You said to me I want
your love the way I need
love to be kind, gentle.

And so the gate opens.
We are beckoned, Enter.
Nothing more’s inside

than was out there,
you say and turn
on your heel with me

alongside your dark cheek
red with the fire of love
betrayed by all but me,

and I want only a horse
and even one for you
to ride farther away

where the rain can’t reach
unless wind blows it
where the lightning hits.

What’s more, the fort
burns up and soldiers
get what they gave.

What’s less, the brass
get off, the fire ignites
embers meant for us all.

And always, someone says
smallpox blankets take
less time in winter.

Sir Lord Jeffrey Amherst
wants to build a town
where he won the peace.

Who was it died here?
he wants to know. Savages,
his adjutant reports.

Let two, three centuries pass.
No one remembers
and if they do, they know

things aren’t what they were
before we took over
the extinction of savages.

Saving our women, children,
and livestock from the devils
slaughtering for sport.

Syllogism: They do to us
what our fathers did to them,
we are the last, we record

what’s etched after the storm
in a sky keeps peeling off
layers until it bares sunlight.

(29 December 2010)

copyright 2010 by Floyce Alexander