Wounded Knee: Summer 2001

This poem appeared in The South Dakota Review and in my book, "Ravens and Other Stories". If you've never been to Wounded Knee, or any other massacre site, you need to go.

Wounded Knee: Summer 2001
A thin sidewalk
marks the dumping ground,
overlooking killing ground.
You lie beneath, suspended
jumble of bones.
In old photographs
we saw corpses frozen,
black against the snow,
caught by death in motion.
That bleak grey paper brought
the air conditioned gallery a different chill.
But here there is only the concrete,
the granite marker and the hills.
And miles stacked on miles of blue, blue sky.
This stark, dusty air makes winter
a bitter dream,
like those photographs seem
here in this peaceful place.
Today tourists, sad for the dead,
wander the dust above your heads,
pitying, leaving,
while the children of your children
stand in the dust
of their receding.