American Odyssey

I watch you go quiet in mid-chatter. You look up and inward, your eyes deep-set and native, I glimpse you, not as that Irish girl brought up in the projects but as an American legend, a promise so very few have discovered or kept. Only here does the land grow mystics that can bake bread and also hammer rivets. The old wild ones who have learned to read, taught by the earth and sky. You belong to the outcast and tribe-less, the indigenous who planted their own deep seeds. Those who innately knew how to take a wild journey barefoot or shod, long before the conquistadores drove their pigs before them chopping up this continent into cuts of meat for their God to eat. A buzzard flaps slowly away, suddenly you smile. ''I'll make dumplings tonight" you say, "just like my Polish grandma used to make em." We calmly carry on walking into the blue distance, Behind us, Lewis and Clark struggle to keep up.