It is the old loneliness
that crushes the Conquistadors:
the murder of the sleeping,
the unsung martyrs.
My country of white sands,
of fractured glass sheen,
failed to mark the Athabaskan
migration, the old grave locations.
It is like the Roman
to forget the Etruscan,
to build on the bones
of slaughtered towns,
to construct paved roads
over grass-edged paths
that once lead to deer herds,
to flocks that blackened the sky.
copyright © 2021 Kenneth P. Gurney
Umflop 