Poem: Trespasses

November 29, 2016

What is ours
And what is our taking?
On this November day
Do we ask ourselves to remember
beyond our happenstance?

Past the kinships and
fond memories of family
ties where easy conversations lay
before warm embers glow.

Keep going
down to the river, down to the
brown muddy banks of the Quinobequin
– re named the Charles after the
English, absolute monarch King.
The name means meandering – the slow river
water that has circled our lives
carries American Indian stories

Do you see them?

I hear their echoes, who knew this land best
in the fields, forests and river banks
– their spirit wells swirl a restless seeking.
In the height of the white pine,
red tail hawk perch, between distant ages
they are waiting still
in our mighty unknowing.

written by Linda Cabot, Bow Seat’s founder and president, in support of the Global #NoDAPL Month of Action to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline