Nautdah

Nautdah Nautdah, they called you, In your real life they named you, When you knew yourself, When you lived out on the unforgiving plains. As Nautdah, Comanche captive, You Became Comanche; Leaving behind the girl Who was Cynthia Parker Sloughed off like an ill-fitted skin. You gave to birth Their greatest leader, Quanah In a field of wildflowers on the Texas plain; Forsook your language and embraced That century of blood and pain For the sake of a people who's way was dying Even as you butchered bison on the endless sea of grass. They recaptured you and made of you a monument to what their wildness Had made of you: A woman of the Elements, a woman who would not be cowed By the conventions of her time; A woman who would never cease Trying to return to the people to whom she really belonged, To the people who belonged to the Sky, the Earth, the Wild Horses. And before Quanah died, having lived with his feet in both Worlds, He arranged to have your bones interred near his, Where the two of you could lie together And dream of wildflowers, and Freedom. .