shadowed canyons

near the edge of a gravel road
she lives quietly.
a few lovers came and left
the generosity of one
bought her a rusting metal trailer.
a sweat-box in summer
in winter it got colder than a coffin
but it's home.

forty-eight summers
finds this graying choctaw child
blushing red skin into rough wrinkles.
beauty squandered in life's toil
years spent settling for the mundane.
never questioning
ancestral assimilation
or a heritage lost
to part of this white woman
born native american.

on the loneliest nights
tired feet slide
into store-bought moccasins
made in china, adorned
with beads strung in sri lanka.
she listens to bargain-bin cd's
knocking back glass after glass
of this year's vintage,

until she's drunk enough
to believe-

the forlorn call of reed flutes
and the beating of drums
echoing through shadowed canyons
is the voice of the Great Spirit
forgiving her existence.

© Copyright claimed 2007, Debra Marlar