Arrows From Heaven and Tribal Lands

A personal note to John Tecumseh Shawnee. Thanks for the link. I did visit and it is now in my heart. Thank you. RGS

This post is for you.


Arrows From Heaven
© 1995 Rolland G. Smith


The heart drum throb of ancient tribes
Transcends in timbre’s pulse sublime
As cadenced rhythmic beat proscribes
A nature past, but still divine.

Shoshone, Ute and Navajo
Proud native hearts of desert west
Shawnee, Zuni, Arapaho
Beat sacred drums for vision quest.

From heaven then, come arrows gold
To find their set within the heart
So story old can then be told
By feathers stride ‘long sacred dart.

The cricket calls in night’s dark damp
To warrior and lunar light
That shows the way to dreamers camp
And wings our minds for freeing flight.

Arcadian shafts, fluted points
Painted ponies and shaman’s chant
Reprise the past and then anoint
The drumming with a stepping slant.

When beat of heart and those of drums
Transform the time of honor due
Ancestral rest then finally comes
And spirit heart is birthed anew.

Tribal Lands
© 1995 Rolland G. Smith

Some hardened stones are all that’s left
Of tribal lands of long ago.
Yet knowing tongues, now speak of times
When native hearts again bestow -
A sacred cleansing at earth’s breast
Of blue corn hallowed on the ground
And thanks go out from modern minds
Acknowledging a pulse profound.

Distant brother come share the blood
Of pale skin and ancient shame.
Trust, long has bled, as casualty
Of broken treaties that proclaim -
The word of some was as the sand
When empty wind would fly its course
And wipe the promise from the heart
When soldiers took with no remorse.

Gentle sister of grassy plain
Help calm the atavistic rage
That lingers as our history.
Release its curse with smudging sage -
And see the smoke then dissipate
The agony of saddened past
That hardened into crusted doubt
Then lands were taken that were vast.