The bones we carried
Were more than the bones that bore.
The long dry plains, then the great fathering water.
The dead cities mounded and the forgotten fields, the forests filling back in.
We brought with us our ancestors’ souls and maize seeds,
The rumor of strange beasts and men behind us.
At the leaning hill we stopped and felt the tannin dark waters
Lapping the cypress knees. Sandhill and bottomland, we spread out
And spread names over the rivers and rises, felt
Our speech along the land’s low and gentle lines. We laid
Our mothers’ and our fathers’ bones to rest in the red clayed ground,
Made ourselves native to the place, spoke the voices out from under the earth.