As I walked near the Prairie called Paynes, a hawk took flight
Soaring high above me
With wings outstretched
Gliding through the smeared colored skyline
An incredible wall of blue and pink color
Splashed with crimson drip bead running off cloud cotton undersides
This falcon of flying called out with an echoing screech from above
Called to the spirit of Osceola
Over the land he once roamed
I kept walking and looking
For I knew he must be awakened
For voices now whispered in the forest all around me
Voices of Seminole mothers hiding from the soldiers
Begging their children not to make a sound
The sun
The fiery alabaster ball in the sky
Seemed to be guiding my way
Peeking through treetops with small beams of light
Casting shadows of movement of a people gone by
Awakened were the footsteps, the footsteps of time
In a place where the coyotes move in the darkness of night
A place where the eagle sits looking over the water
The water that waves from gators gliding along its surface
As I walked the trail, the footsteps grew louder
And the whisperers kept pleading
I felt the spirits of the old ones
Following right along side
Drifting with me
As alive as they were so long ago
It was then I thought of the last ones who resisted
Osceola and his people defied incredible odds
He would not be pushed back anymore
Sitting down underneath a cracked-bark Live Oak
I closed my eyes and thought, five hundred years this tree’s been standing
It is the last living thing
To see Osceola and his people live wild and free
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