poets take us on the trail of tears

April 11, 2018 in poetry

A Chickasaw novelist, essayist, and environmentalist, Linda Hogan was born in Denver, Colorado. She earned an undergraduate degree from the University of Colorado-Colorado Springs and an MA in English and creative writing from the University of Colorado-Boulder.

Intimately connected to her political and spiritual concerns, Hogan’s poetry deals with issues such as the environment and eco-feminism, the relocation of Native Americans, and historical narratives, including oral histories. William Kittredge, in his introduction to Hogan’s Rounding the Human Corners, noted, “poets like Linda, through their language, open for us a doorway into their specific resonating dream of the electric universe.”

Hogan is the author of the poetry collections Calling Myself Home (1978); Daughters, I Love You (1981); Eclipse (1983); Seeing Through the Sun (1985), which won the American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation; Savings (1988), The Book of Medicines, a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist (1993); Rounding the Human Corners (2008); Indios (2012); and Dark. Sweet. New and Selected Poems (2014).

Hogan’s collections of prose also reflect her interests in the environment and Native American culture. Her books include the essay collection Dwellings: A Spiritual History of the Living World (1995), The Woman Who Watches Over the World: A Native Memoir (2001), and, with Brenda Peterson, Sighting: The Gray Whales’ Mysterious Journey (2002). Together with Brenda Peterson, she also edited the anthology The Sweet Breathing of Plants: Women and the Green World (2001). A recipient of grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation for her fiction, Hogan’s novels include Mean Spirit (1990), Solar Storms (1995), Power (1998), and People of the Whale (2008).

Trail of Tears: Our Removal

by Linda Hogan

With lines unseen the land was broken.

When surveyors came, we knew

what the prophet had said was true,

this land with unseen lines would be taken.

So, you who live there now,

don’t forget to love it, thank it

the place that was once our forest,

our ponds, our mosses,

the swamplands with birds and more lowly creatures.

As for us, we walked into the military strength of hunger

and war for that land we still dream.

As the ferry crossed the distance,

or as the walkers left behind their loved ones,

think how we took with us our cats and kittens,

the puppies we loved. We were innocent of what we faced,

along the trail. We took clothing, dishes,

thinking there would be something to start a new life,

believing justice lived in the world,

and the horses, so many,

one by one stolen, taken by the many thieves

So have compassion for that land at least.

Every step we took was one away from the songs,

old dances, memories, some of us dark and not speaking English,

some of us white, or married to the dark, or children of translators

the half-white, all of us watched by America, all of us

longing for trees for shade, homing, rooting,

even more for food along the hunger way.

You would think those of us born later

would fight for justice, for peace,

for the new land, it’s trees being taken.

You would think

the struggle would be over

between the two worlds in this place

that is now our knowledge,

our new belonging, our being,

and we’d never again care for the notion of maps

or American wars, or the god of their sky,

thinking of those things we were forced to leave behind,

living country, stolen home,

the world measured inch by inch, mile by mile,

hectares, all measurements, even the trail of our tears.

With all the new fierce light, heat, drought

the missing water, you’d think

in another red century, the old wisdom

might exist if we considered enough

that even before the new beliefs

we were once whole,

but now our bodies and minds remain

the measured geography.

About Patti Digh

Patti Digh is an author, speaker, and educator who builds learning communities and gets to the heart of difficult topics. Her work over the last three decades has focused on diversity, inclusion, social justice, and living and working mindfully. She has developed diversity strategies and educational programming for major nonprofit and corporate organizations and has been a featured speaker at many national and international conferences.