Long South dakota Poems

Native American Translations

Cherokee Travelers' Blessing I
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

I will extract the thorns from your feet.
For yet a little while, we will walk life's sunlit paths together.
I will love you like my own...

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Juvenilia: Early Poems XI

Myth
by Michael R. Burch

after the sprung rhythm of Dylan Thomas

Here the recalcitrant wind
sighs with grievance and remorse
over fields of wayward gorse
and thistle-throttled lanes.

And she is the myth of the scythed wheat
hewn and...

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Salat Days
by Michael R. Burch 

(dedicated to my grandfather, Paul Ray Burch Sr.)

I remember how my grandfather used to pick poke salat ...
though first, usually, he’d stretch back in the front porch swing,
dangling his long...

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The past can’t tell the future; I'd almost forgotten this,
The past six years had brought me higher yields than average,
Though expectations soared, now nada, nothing, zilch.
Our wheat fields decimated from the lack of rain.
And those...

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Part 1

This is a true story about world’s end,
But don’t freak out for it was long ago
God’s message must have been garbled
That the prophet’s prophecy failed you know.

And since those days in fifty eight
Such prophecies...

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Crazy Horse Monument

Up there! On the Black Hills Mountain, 1
A work in progress sculptured in granite,
Of a stern faced warrior, strong and determined, 2
Unadorned in a war bonnet, with his hair flowing in the wind,
And...

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It seems a shame that you're not here
To share my evening stroll with me, 
As I walk down this gravel road
That takes off just outside of town.
Two pheasants flush from bar ditch pools
(The grassy soup...

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Mount Rushmore; Carved In Stone

From deep within the earth’s crust,
An orogeny pushes
The batholith upwards
To become ‘The Shrine of Democracy,’
Of weathered presidential faces
Chiseled in rock in South Dakota;
Representing 150 years of history
(From birth of a nation
To...

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Pausing on a late trip to South Dakota
I pulled off of the highway
Somewhere in Kansas
And shut off the lights
Reflecting that it might be good
To clear the windshield of bug carcasses
That were only being smeared 
Into...

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The location of the Spring Creek School was on a flat, nestled 
between the cliff on the north and the Little White River on the south.  The river 
flowed in from the northwest, circled...

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The surrounding grounds were prairie grasses and brush.  Trees were 
scattered along the west boundary while the eastern area was furnished with a 
heavier growth of various kinds of trees.  Willows and buffalo...

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In 1957 I took my teaching certificate back to the land of my mother.  
She was raised on a cattle ranch in the north central area of Nebraska.  The 
famous Sand Hills. ...

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There were seven Indian Government schools.  All built alike.  The 
one I'm writing about is Spring Creek.  He Dog, Soldier Creek and White River, 
Grass Mountain, Two Kettle, and Black Pipe were...

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There is no real life without love and no love without life.                       ...

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The Cinematic Film Treatment as Poetic Element 
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Sagitanis Goes 'Bow Wow' 

Nightingale Sagitanis is a homeless woman suffering chronic and debilitating bouts of near-terminal existential ennui and muscatel intoxication until, in the midst of...

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There’s a soft glimmer of day on the horizon
As a vanquished sun is swept away by dusk’s dark flow
With a slender slip of a cloud stretched North to the South
That floats on the sweetness, the...

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A Son ~ far away ~ too far
South Dakota ~ now his Wedding Anniversary, "Seventeen"
here in Nebraska, the Midwest
time evolves ~ into space!

Miles and miles ~ the ducks fly over
they have a port,
almost their own...

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Black Hills Legacy

In the vaults of the U.S. government,
Sits a cache of money gathering interest.
But money cannot buy the hearts of a people
In exchange for land and legacy
For breaking the Laramie Treaty.

The ‘Black Hills’ have...

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‘Wana Hin Gle’ the Lakota call me,
‘Wana Hin Gle’ my given name

‘He Who Happens Now,’ the drum beat has found me,
reaching into this moment beyond glory and fame

As ‘Wana Hin Gle,’ my spirit has wandered,
as...

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Of course on this night we are supposed to be asleep so Santa 
could come, but we hadn't been home from Midnight Mass very long, and the 
invigorating cold was not conducive to sleep. ...

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‘Wana Hin Gle’ the Lakota call me,
‘Wana Hin Gle’ my given name

‘He Who Happens Now,’ the drumbeat has found me,
reaching into this moment beyond glory and fame

As ‘Wana Hin Gle,’ my spirit has wandered,
as ‘Wana...

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Driving South Dakota in December
Means you’re a “Stupid Club” member
I’d never even heard of a “White Out”
That’s what this story’s all about

Cruising along and relaxed as can be
My three daughters, my wife and me
You could...

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_____________________________________
 
The black mesa yield 
of goodness, peacefulness
and gifts of knowledge abound

With a building rhythm  upon stretched elk hide
the ominous drum beat plays loud
a ceremony has begun 
as the sun set calm Westward

Incessant whispers...

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Took a spirit trek
across the golden amber prairie
Zephyr driven westward
to the South Dakota Black Hills

Had a restless pioneer rest,
unsettling
I laid my dear skin gentle feelings
on the hard ground
Lit the campfire
to reach out to the darkness

To-morrow’s...

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"Vision Zero" -- no more deaths from highway accidents. The idea was born in Sweden, where it's had spectacular success in reducing traffic fatalities. Now zeroing out all traffic fatalities must become an explicit U.S....

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