Its rough paper felt shaved from ancient trees in
wide lines that gave my young ideas room to roam
On its red cover the chief’s proud profile
inspired me to carefully carve my words with
the sharp lead pencils I rode into prairie grasses
on the bare backs of palominos in the stories I wrote,
into forests I traversed in mythical moccasins
over ancestral footpaths, paddled downstream through
historical amnesia into the genocide of the American Indian
hidden behind the dusty chalk clouds of third grade
and the images I found by chance in a high school
library book at the end of The Trail of Tears