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.
Christian Skoorsmith is a writer, teacher, and award-winning hypnotherapist in Seattle, Washington. In recent years, poetry for him has been a source of inspiration and therapeutic integration, particularly in the turn of midlife and a closer examination of his own conscious and unconscious biases. For Christian, struggling with the exactitude of the written word and leaning into the playful creativity of poetry engages both sides of the brain, so that 'integration' can itself be a generative act. Widely published in books and magazines in his young adulthood, Christian released his first book of poetry only last year: "Trust Only the Trembling, and other poems exploring manhood." In January, a second book, "Out of Nowhere: poems of place and being," was released - both books available in stores and online. A new chapbook, "Scars of Evolution and other poems," is available only on the self-publishing platform Lulu.com.