TRICKLING STREAM

If these rocks could tell the story
Of life from long ago,
They would whisper about the Red Man,
Who weathered summer droughts,
And faced the cold of an Oklahoma snow.

Their villages rested only yards away
From this life-giving stream,
Where they caught fish from the crystal clear wafers,
Surrounded by a forest of dark green.

Generations walked these wide rocky shores
In soft brown moccasins,
Their footsteps, an echo of the chase.
The fevered pursuit of a wild deer,
Bronze bodies, running with primitive elegance,
Hunter and hunted,
Painting a vision of rhythmic grace.

If the babbles of this trickling stream could be heard,
Whispered to the forest and the nesting bird,
It would tell of campfires and the unspoken word,
And a people akin to the wind
And wild things.

Reggie Anne Walker-Wyatt
Copyright August 2000