Anita Kline "Woody Guthrie’s Misunderstanding" at "Poets 11" 2016
Channel: San Francisco Public Library
Date: 2016-10-05

After five days with the Indians, hearing their stories of
not-so-long-ago losses on bloody battlefields and
in boarding schools,
and just last week in a double-wide on the rez
when the sheriff was called yet again to a suicide scene,
his teenage daughter’s best friend
After five days with the Indians
(and mostly that is the name they prefer)
hearing stories of this land, for thousands of years shared land
cared for, not owned, never for sale,
then for merely hundreds of years Some One’s land
for the taking, the raping, the auctioning off to the highest bidder
After five days listening and three weeks traveling on this land
from California to the Pine Ridge sad lands
past lakes of the Ghost Dance, past sites of The Sun Dance,
sullied now with toxic mine tailings, stinking pits,
all there was to take taken
in the name of destiny and progress
After five days of steadying rhythms, cleansing sage,
encircling ceremonies around the fire,
suddenly Woody’s well-intentioned protest
is not the song that wants to be sung.
This land,
from the Gulf Stream water
to the redwood forest,
is not my land,
nor your land
nor even our land
if you mean only a homeland
for two-legged too-small-minded creatures.
This land is The Land, The Mother
who birthed us, sustains us, The Earth
where bundled offerings hang from branches,
where buffalo graze again,
where water greens grass,
and wind carries sounds of flute and drum
across Father Sky
past the Milky Way
to all creation in all directions
where all is possessed by no one.