Let's see.
OK, I'll read a couple more and that'll be it.
This one is called "Thanksgiving at Snake Butte."
And Snake Butte is just below the Fort Belknap agency,
where my folks live.
And one day my dad and I were riding up there,
and we came across some carvings on these very large flat rocks.
And on the carvings were--
the carvings were fish and lizards, and there was a snake.
And there was even a guy on his knee, shooting a bow and arrow.
And so this was quite significant.
This went back to the old days, when
the Indians up on the plains were
chasing their herds of buffalo.
They would camp on Snake Butte, because it was easily
defensible from three sides and the only
had to worry about the backside.
And so it was about Thanksgiving when we went up there,
and I wrote this poem about that.
In time we rode that trail up the Butte,
just far as time would let us.
The answer to our time lay hidden
in the long grasses on the top.
Antelope scattered through the rocks before us,
clattered unseen down the easy slope to the West.
Our horses balked, stiff legged.
Their nostrils flared at something unseen, gliding
smoothly through brush away.
On top, our horses broke, loped through a small stand
of stunted pine, then jolted to a nervous walk.
Before us lay the smooth stones of our ancestors.
The fish, the lizard, snake and bent-kneed bowman.
Etched by something crude, by a wandering race.
Driven by their names for time.
Its winds, it's rain, its snow and the cold moon
tugging at the crude figures in this, the season of their loss.