Here's a very simple accessible poem.
It's called "The Man From Washington" and in the poem
I try to just imagine what it must
have been like for the Indians in the West.
The Plains tribes and particularly the Blackfeet,
when a man from Washington DC, would
come to tell them that they were going
to be put on reservations and the promises
that he would make.
And just what must have happened.
"The end came easy for most of us.
Packed away in our crude beginnings,
in some far corner of a flat world.
We didn't expect much more than firewood and buffalo robes
to keep us warm.
The man came down, a slouching dwarf with rainwater eyes
and spoke to us.
He promised that life would go on as usual.
The treaties would be signed and everyone man, woman, and child
would be inoculated against a world in which they
had no part.
A world of money, promise and disease."