Monarchs
—The Murder of Sitting Bull, Pine Ridge Reservation, 1890
Shots and the encore of shots
cut
morning from dawn,
season
from season,
when, still half asleep,
he opened the door.
They’d love him
in Paris and New York,
even the victory
over Custer,
the starving
of 1877,
his signature,
the smile
he’d given
with bread and coffee
and most of his pay
to the kids
begging
outside
the Wild West Show.
They cheered
every insult
he called them,
flustered translators
greeting his train
in St. Louis,
in Milan,
ridiculous
derbies
laughing and waving
at a captive beast.
They loved him
trading a joke
with Annie Oakley
when she combed
that brown hair,
washed
in the afternoon,
wavy and sparkling
as the grass
elk dream
in their late
summer sleep.
So well loved:
no one knew
and to this day
no one knows
where his bones
break.
Butterflies joined
when blood was given;
they drank its salt,
the routes of migration
they pass down.