DEAD WARRIORS' RETURN

Nearly a century has passed
since they last rode,
but today the warriors return
in clamorous stampedes.
They ride to the beat of thunderdrums
in daytime dark
among low clouds.
From pinnacles of the Rockies,
they storm eastward
as grim reminders
of land that once was theirs.
I cringe to the din of hoofbeats
surging across the Plains
where Cherokee firepower lights the sky.
In windless valleys
woven with greenbrier,
I take refuge from the warriors
until the last wild horse has passed.
My heart beats doubly fast
as guilt and fear
invite remorse
for all their senseless killings
by frontiersmen hungering west.

© Harding Stedler

One spring day, a couple years ago, I was sitting in a pavilion at a local park, attempting to write a poem, when a storm approached. Such dreadful thunder I had never heard before. It sounded like a stampede of horses. Needless to say, I could not help but wonder who, from where, and why.

In the course of writing, I discovered the answers to these questions. (One thing writing is, is discovery.) What I seemed to be hearing was the return of Cherokee warriors driven from their land by white men more than a century ago. Feeling that the American Indian was given a raw deal by white settlers moving west, I could not help but feel pangs of guilt for what my ancestors did to them.