Knee Legacy

As the Lakotahs say, “wokiksuye cankpe opi “ (remember Wounded Knee).

Six score years ago

300 Lakotahs died,

but saw no justice.

At Wounded Knee Creek

one lone Knee survived assault

and went limping off.

This one pristine bone,

became a fugitive and

roamed the world alone.

Christian Morgenstern

met this wee celebrit-knee

inspiring poetry:

The Knee

On earth there roams a lonely knee

It’s just a knee, that’s all.

It’s not a tent, it’s not a tree,

it’s just a knee that’s all.

There was a man once in a war
Overkilled, killed fatally.
Alone, unhurt, remained the knee
Like a saint’s relics, pure.

Since then it roams the whole world, lonely.
It is a knee now, only.
It’s not a tent; it’s not a tree;
Only a knee, no more.

After World War One,

the Knee thought War was done, then

saw the Second one.

Facing war the world

around, the Knee headed home,

a jiggety jog.

It stowed aboard a

Carnival Cruise ship disguised

as a castanet.

As desk paper weight

it reminded Lakotas

of their legacy.

So they gathered in

‘73 and fought a small

bloody incident.

About that time I

took a class of poetry

when one morning

Professor Ammons

turned to face me, “Don’t bury your

axe in Wounded Knee.”

“That line just came to

me. I’ve got to jot it down,

put it in a poem.”

Though I never found

his line in a poem, it

burned in memory.

A calculus of words

spawned and grew from that time on.

Knee, unbent, lives on!

“Don’t bury..." to post,

tweet, poetry...an endless

spiral mission creep.

Note: I recently read Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History by S. C. Gwynne. The Comanches were among the most cruel and mean-spirited of tribes, and so hated that other tribes willingly betrayed them. Sort of the Sparta among Indian tribes though among the last hold-outs. Sad to say, mankind's heritage is a long history of warring tribes/gangs that projects enemy tribes as the source of the evil in this world. We should know better by now. My fear is that mankind will all become brothers just about the time that we are overwhelmed by unstoppable global warming, and then mankind will revert to desperate tribal butchery again because the amount of livable land is so small.