The Bog Indian

cased in the sweet soft peat, in the meadow trough of a tractor’s pull,
lay frozen the cold still Indian, fallen here in a late forgotten struggle
the scars of his kind are no longer deep, his running not a silent sweep
over a wet and windless draw, for perhaps this bog was much grander,
and the wooded acres that bordered more lightless then, soft and old
but of his kind, now long gone, the warrior’s song was sounded,
was known and told along the river ways and ocean-wrecked shore:

we are the Wampanoag, mighty and proud!
our drums thunder as the waves on the dawn!
our fires burn a place for the stars!
our hearts beat silent as the evening wind!
we are the Wampanoag!

and now having passed into stillness, having passed into paler hands,
these battle-fated warriors, to sleep ’neath the cool brackish waters,
or among the bitter fruits, to fall unwounded and unfound till the roots
break the sleeping peat moist and dark—for Earth calls unto her bosom
they who have loved her most, who have fallen lost, who have fallen first

Reviews

[emmajoy]

Your style is unusual but beckoning. The way in which you've written this has a distinct but initially hidden metre. The story behind your poem is tragic but written in an undramatic way, mere truth frequently is like that. And, truth this and sad .. we wonder events and mysteries lie behind the peat bogs .. and that's why they never really be dug up.