View From Mount Rushmore
By Christian Skoorsmith
It is quivering how far into the sacred hills the white man pushed
to carve his likeness into stone, a graven image if ever there was one,
unblinking eyes never wrinkled by joy, fear, hope.
Impossible for them to turn around and look
behind themselves. How forceful a monument can speak.
How true, when tongues are stilled.
The fireworks and fanfare weak drums to waken
the old men of the mountain. We sing their songs but we do not believe them.
Sing louder. At their throats thirteen million uncounted stone tears. No rain can reach them,
seedlings lost to rocky soil, no soft home for roots, perish in the sun.
A story told by another long-nosed wise man who wandered all over
still could not find the entrance to Jackson’s heart.
The Old Indian-Fighter brought back elephant skulls to molder
in museums alongside stolen bones, hides, hair
heaped in piles and burned in school yards.
Some hands on display – shriveled, under glass, pinned with inventory numbers.
The graves of children unmarked rest easier now, finally
free to listen to the wind in unmown grass above them, to sing their spirit songs.
Hair keeps growing after death. For a while, until
it finds rest somewhere blown back over the sea.
At Little Bighorn they still remember every warrior’s name. They have to
for every uncounted fingernail at Wounded Knee, black
with dark earth from desperate clawing at Why. All of it
at the heart of our nation, carved in stone (lest we forget)
facing us. What we cannot see
stacked in bleachers, drenched in flags; what they see
over our heads: a horizon where the sun sets on America.