A Long Hard Road (Part I)

 RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: TRUE HISTORY

 

A Long Hard Road Part I

 

This is a story about how things go together

Told in the language of the common folk

A language meant for talking

For telling stories in a crowded barroom

For speaking out loud in a circle of friends

It’s the language of Faulkner, McCarthy,

Steinbeck and Woody Guthrie

(but that’s another story)

 

This story begins in the green valleys,

endless forests, rugged mountains and

winding rivers of rural Tennessee

It may be the story rightly begins long

before Tennessee was even a name on a map

when the seven tribes of the Natchez Trace

lived and prospered on the mother of all rivers

before the great white invasion

 

But this story begins with the Cherokee

Known by the whites as the civilized tribe

(Tecumseh and Crazy Horse might disagree

but that too is another story)

 

The Cherokee invented their own syllabary

so they could write and read in their own language

They wrote their own constitution

They formed their own democracy

They elected their own representatives

 

The Supreme Court of the United States of

America (an audacious name but there it is)

recognized their lawful sovereignty but at that

time a man from Tennessee who grew up with

the Cherokee and led many of them into the Battle

of New Orleans was elected president of the

white man’s nation

 

His name was Andrew Jackson and he didn’t

think much of the Supreme Court’s decision

In fact he tossed it out with the daily trash

He ordered the Cherokee, Choctaw, the Creek

and Chickasaw herded up like cattle and

moved a thousand miles away to a desolate

land no white man wanted (until they did

but that is another story)

 

It came to be known as the Trail of Tears

but it was not just Indian tears on the path

to the setting sun where all things go to die

 

The poor white folk and black folk and other

folk lined up along the trail to watch a proud

people humbled by hardship and pushed to

the edge of their limits

 

They watched and their tears became a river

flowing, a path of sorrow, and a tribute to

the human spirit

 

Thousands of folks native to the land packed

what belongings they could and marched the

long hard road to Indian Territory

 

Some died, some escaped and many endured

It would come to be called Oklahoma

(but that is another story)