Reclamation Song

Reclamation Song

I will cleave the trunk of this old pine,
count the rings backwards 
to my father’s birth  
my mother’s death,
find the ring the year
they  married
and whittle from it 
something more enduring 
than their fragile bond,
the lineage they left me.

I did not come to die here, 
but unroot,
strip the shape they
they pressed into me,
remove the nails that
keep them tethered
to the under-earth,  
splinter  these wizened panels, 
this tree they breathed on
and marked.  

I will leave enough
for Tsi’yugunsini’s soul,
the Cherokee who
refused the name
given to him,
walked out
of forced burial—

Enough
for the knot I carve
to house birds.

I return my cradle,
the doorframe
my father built,
the prayer bench
my mother leaned on—
and cried—

I will take
what still holds breath
and burn
what insists on silence.

I seek neither to kiss you nor die in you
as they did.  
I seek neither reliquary nor root,
I want only the wood that knows
and can hold weight without splintering. 

Let me emerge from your hollow with the sacred things—
the line of the half-forgotten,
without their altar on my back.  

Let me build again.