Approaching Little Big Horn

All spring the scattered bands gathered,
the People, the Human Beings,
all those like themselves on this earth —
Lakota and Cheyenne and Arapaho.
Movement and magnetism, wildness
in the air, the power of the buffalo
and the People swarming and flowing north
to the sweetness of the old land

and the old ways, up on the Powder River,
out along the Rosebud and Greasy Grass
called by whites the Little Big Horn.
The great leaders come: Low Dog, Two Moon,
Touch The Clouds, Rain In The Face, Gall.
Wise men and leaders, young warriors, all come.
The family men and the family members,
babies and children, wives, grandparents,

all north to the buffalo ranges as spring
becomes summer in the magnetic wildness
of 1876, in the power and sweetness
of summer, the last in the old life;
cutting pieces of flesh from arms and chest,
staring into the sun, into wildness and buffalo,
the power of dancing and chanting, praying,
cutting until the great victory vision comes.