Red Run

Here in February’s grey
I bleed away,
Red run into the snow.
So many years from home
I, here, a fugitive
A captive too.
The home I had gone away
This one not mine, not quite.
The whisky jack mocks me
The “caw caw”
and my soul crawls
Into the frozen ground.
I will die here – not grown old –
I will wither away.
No sun to warm my bones;
They will bow
And break.
The chinook wind howling
Down the alley of a life forgotten.
No one here knows my name.
I am not a child of this land.
The rivers do not sing me home.
The drums do not beat for me.
The as-sin-wati will not remember me.
I am no more here,
But Africa she must mourn for me.
As a mother for a daughter snatched away…
I hear the dirge, the endless lament:
She will forget me not.