Poem : Spirits Of The Plains

Panic came in the form of reporting
Hysteria came in the form of a bullet
The great Sitting Bull was dead
The Ghost Dancers with shirts of protection
Fled Standing Rock Reservation that cold day in December
Chief Big Foot, Sitting Bull’s half brother
Led the Lakota away
Away from the chaos and confusion of gunshots
Away from a life of food rations and disease
Of sick dying children
Big Foot was looking for help from Chief Red Cloud
Hoping he’d protect them some way
But was soon cut off by the Seventh Calvary
Who disarmed the Lakota
Then had them make camp
Soon the Sioux were completely surrounded
Soldiers waited with field-cannons pointed at teepees
Teepees filled with Indian families
The absolute carnage that followed
Would become a scar on what we know as humanity
When the shaman
Yellow Bird
Sang out to the spirits of the Plains
The massacre began
Cannons shook the earth with their fiery blast of destruction
The soldiers’ rifles cut through the people trying to flee
Cries from the dying fathers, sons, and old men alike
Mixed hauntingly with the gun smoke in the air
Cries of infants in dead mothers’ arms
Mothers shot so close the gun power blacken their skin
Grandmothers lay still in the blood soaked snow
No longer able to comfort the young children crying
Then came the silence, eerie and endless
The cold wind moaned as it blew over the dead
Tears frozen from falling in the frigid conditions
Glistened like crystals on pain stricken faces
Eyes wide open with all of deaths’ knowing
Children were called to by the soldiers
They were told it was safe to come out of hiding
Only to be surrounded and shot
Big Foot laid frozen and stiff
He could no longer help his people
20 Medals’ of Honor were awarded that day to these soldiers
This is something I will never understand
Now
Yellow Bird whispers in the wind
As the sad snow drifts over the mass grave at Wounded Knee
For the Sioux’s spirits still move on the Plains