Back then, there were places where our feet
could not freely walk, where our bodies
could not stand without standing apart from those
our eyes and broken speech giving us away,
patched overalls with a tie on Sunday mornings.
They put up signs: No Indians or Finns Allowed.
They called us Reds, Commies, Jackpine Savages,
called us Barbarians, wearing only our flesh
from sauna to lake shore, steam rising like a thousand
unsettled ghosts, speaking a language full of
closed doors to outsiders, the clicks and
clacks of birds and fallen branches.
Some of us still believed in God, though our sin
was having dared to question the ruling class, dared --
like young Twist -- to humbly ask for more.
But we made our spaces sacred through sweat.
We built a floor on which to dance,
a schoolhouse so our children could learn,
placed our chairs up in the trees, high enough to see
the black sedans of federal agents below,
our minds drifting with the untethered clouds.
Back then, we were dangerous, we were other,
reluctant revolutionaries in this new land,
wanting only to live our quiet working lives.
But sometimes the rabble needs to be roused,
the earth itself shaken from slumber,
the forest called to by name until it answers
in kind, until it invites you as family, and as friend,
its open door leading you gently further in.
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