A black crow flew over the long fence
as the First People signed the treaty
defining the lands by White Man’s rules.

George Washington, the early surveyor,
drew straight lines ignoring a river course
used for tree navigation by a soaring crow,

Later surveyors ignored mountains, too,
drawing curving contour lines on flat
maps showing no flatlands of the crow.

The foothills were lands of the condor
and the hallowed ground of a Great Spirit,
but colonizers searched the map contours

for a mountain pass: the way westward
into treaty lands of tribes. Settlers took-up
homesteading, ignored treaties, adopting

the way of the Windigo—the greedy taking
more. The gangly vultures ate the carrion
from the buffalo slaughter. Settlers farmed.

And crows angrily cawed at taking the valley
of their dusk-time murder for relative flocks
that gathered on this traditional land of crow.

Left without address to detail what is owned,
the First People, caretakers of crow and condor,
eagle and buffalo, got no vote by Windigo rule.

* “The ‘Windigo’ is a human being who has become a cannibal monster. Its bite will transform victims into cannibals, too.”
From Robin Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass

Patricia Carney, Cudahy, lives on southeast shore of Lake Michigan and is published throughout the Midwest, including Bramble. In February 2020, she was first place winner of Ekphrastic poetry competition, Inspiration Studio. Her chapbook A Kayak is my Church Pew was recently published by Kelsay Press.