National Poetry Month: Ephemerals

I walk the woods seeking spring’s ephemerals,
turning leaf and rock like a child seeks treasures,

here in the woods of the Creek, the Cherokee,
here where the creek clatters freely down limestone.

Here mottled trilliums blanket the floor;
hepatica’s white petals blanket the moss.

The presence of spirits long departed, evicted,
spring up beside blue sprays of long Jacob’s Ladder,
and breathe upon poppy and Indian Turnip.

I hear the breath of deerskin leggings,
deerskin shirts against raw bark of oak
gracing the woods of the Creek, the Cherokee.

Speaking sign language graceful, obscure,
persimmon and dogwood weave forgotten
tales with limber fingers that cannot forget

the place of Green Corn Dance, the blessing of hunting,
the blessings of He-sa-ke-tv-me-se,
the “Master of Breath” who breathed upon
the woods of the Creek and the Cherokee.

I see steadfast Creek men coax fish into dams,
Cherokee women coax squash into life,
giving life, in bright patches of shade-edged sunlight

where the deer and the owl vibrant, alive, nibbled
sumac, and jimsen weed, where brown hands
kneaded sassafras root–the root and the weed–

for healing the wounds of the Creek and the Cherokee
the Creek and the Cherokee waging their wars
in the woods of Muscogee and AniYunwiya

in these woods where sweet violets rise up unperturbed.

(c) Rosemary McMahan