The Ghost Dancers

The Ghost Dancers

Amassed upon the Great Plains
from four corners of this land.
Vanishing native tribes gathered remains
of peaceful energy forming a ceremonial band.
They prayed to Wakan Tanka-
Great Spirit of them all,
for peaceful ways to end the wars
and wait out the white mans fall.

With hopes to bring about a change;
joined together in a movement that
white settlers came to call as strange.
The tribes performed the sacred Ghost Dance.
It was a sight to behold.
On ridges above fearful soldiers got a glance
of glowing mist surrounding the dancers.
Some even saw strange lights appearing in the skies.

The Ghost Dancers danced for weeks.
Their campfires never allowed to go out.
Dust illuminating? Or Divine white streaks?
Instilling cold fear in the white man, who
never knew what the dance was about,
misinterpreted it as a war dance bringing back
ghosts of those people savagely squandered.
Believing the Ghost Dance preceded an attack.

After weeks of ceremony and Ghost Dancing,
it's said a Prophet appeared to the people.
He told them their plight of sorrow was advancing
they had become lost in the valley of shadows.
They needed to make their camps ready now;
there would be a great flood across meadows.
They would rise above the white mans ways
-of blood for blood-
and find their way out of the Valleys of Shadows.

Many stories followed this movement
of what occurred at the Great Ghost Dance.
A Medicine Man set out for improvement
spreading the Gospel of the Prophet
along with his disciple Sitting Bull.
In their telling they felt they had instilled,
hope that the people might be renewed.
In the end at a reservation Sitting Bull was killed.

His people fled and joined up with Big Foot.
Who's band was escorted to Wounded Knee.
There the calvary was ordered to uproot
all tribesmen and move them to another fort.
A shot rang out and began the shooting spree.
Unaware that Big Foot had renounced,
The Ghost Dance Ceremony
a pilgrimage never made it to Wounded Knee.

Over a hundred years ago
they were slaughtered in the snow .
Along with their leader Big Foot.
A monument of tears that still flow
scarred the hearts of people of this land forever,
putting an end to the Ghost Dancing of so long ago.
Rumor has it that the Ghost Dance ceremony
was awakened again in Montana just ten years ago.

They say the Elders came from all four corners of the Earth,
and the rainbows came into the night skies.
Perhaps to prepare them for the Great Buffalo Walk
to a new land where the Red man no longer cries.

Signature made by Sonnetwolf


A wonderful review on this poem - Review Of "The Ghost Dancers" (nw) [Rated: E]

Review By: drjim



Date and Time: 01-27-09 @ 7:37pm
Public/Private: Public
Reviewer's Rating: (5.0)
Review Length: 2,095 Characters | 2,070 w/o WritingML



"The Ghost Dancers" is a monumental poem, a poem filled with great clarity and feeling. Reading through this work, we retrieve from it the great, singular clarity of what the meaning of it was - and how we are left with the impression that though nearly lost to the ages, it has been brought back, giving us the hope that the First Peoples, decimated and left to die in a literal Dark Valley of the Ages, will arise again, peacefully, and rule the Plains once more. This poetry, with an unerring eye cast toward history, acknowledges the genocide perpetrated against the Native Americans more than 100 years ago; this isn't a poem about hate and vengeance. This is a poem about empowerment, about realizing that now, perhaps, the voices of the First Elders can now be heard, however faintly, from distance afar. We are left to wonder what their message is...

Some people - for generations - believed that God could not speak to them literally...or figuratively either. To admit this was to admit blasphemy. Why would God speak personally to us, we of such small stature?

This poem signifies a different experience; in a sense, the First Peoples did and do believe in a form of panentheism, or God completely within all...and not just a God of hellfire, breathing anger from high above. To read this poem is to be refreshed with the grace and certain glory that we are imbued with all spirit, of all things. It is as simple as looking around us, walking with living beings of every kind and realizing that this is a completely remarkable walk of life.

Perhaps if we only started living and breathing this way of Life some one hundred years ago, when one of the most brutal acts of mankind's genocide was irrefutably turned back; that an arrogant General in the US Army discovered that might does not always make right, especially when it was discovered that such a force was in the [i]minority - both numerically and spiritually.

Thank you ShiShad, for this beautiful poem. It rings of truth and hopefully, a more peaceful tomorrow....



Soar On!!