chiefredelk Poetry (2)

FROM THE BOOK WALKS ON THE PRAIRIE
BY CHIEF REDELK IRONHORSE THOMAS



Down by the Oconoluftee
amid the wild flowers and rose,
lived the Cherokee people
where the honey suckle grows.
They lived in peace and harmony
where everyone got along,
taught and raised their children
to know right from wrong.
One day great thunder sound
and soldiers tred our land,
blood stained the earth
as we died by their hand.
They killed four thousand innocent children
laid in shallow unmarked graves,
as soldiers came in thousands
with cannons guns and staves.


They put our Holy woman in a
cold wood wagon bed,
left her to cough in her own blood
no blankets for her head.
Next morning for miles
did the word spread,
our people wailed in sorrow
our Holy woman was dead.


On that fateful day in December
our death march ended,
our women and children cried
our Elders on canes bended.
They put us in a place
we neither liked nor knew,
in time we built our homes
as our children grew.
There are now clean white houses
where once cabins stood,
our maidens now cook with gas
where once they cooked with wood.

Our children are at peace again
where the honey suckle grows,
they say for every tear thats shed
blooms a white Cherokee rose.
There have been four thousand changes
for every Cherokee who died,
one for each and every mother
who held their dead childs hand and cried.

We are strong and proud and say to those
who sought our death decree,
we are God's people
WE ARE THE CHEROKEE!

True love is a sacred flame
that burns eternally,
and none can dim its special glow
or change its destiny.

True love is a petaled rose
that blooms again each Spring,
true love is a little child
a special precious thing.

And true love comes from in the heart
it neither rules nor binds,
and true love comes from deep within
the heart that it entwines.

From Chief Redelk Ironhorse Thomas' Book 'WALKS ON THE PRAIRIE"