Dark Birds Remember

Dark birds Empty fields

We left the eastern horizon

Shimmering behind us

And must invent a reason

To explain why all this

Has happened

Pills don't help

Dreams don't help

They no longer come

I watched Will Rogers

In the Modjeska

On South KK

Kinnickinnic Ave

What could that word mean

We got here so late

And we remember nothing

Names ring out

Fade and recede

Kinnickinnic

Kickapoo

Kenosha

Kaukana

We grew up

Playing in fields

Of disappearance

Massacres forts

Running past hitching posts

Walls topped

With shards of glass

Invisible lines

Drawn they say

By a distant god

In a distant garden

And bequeathed

To whites

The angle streets

Of this city

Milwaukee Clark Elston

Are Indian trails they say

How can we forget

What we never knew

But we know

Kinnickinnic means

That which is mixed

Tobacco with

The inner bark

Of willow

Or dogwood