Indian Girls

By Linda McCarriston

I.

They come down all the ways
waterways or over snow and
frozen river, or come down
roads in pickups, getting
away, getting to town.

Many clans, tribes,
the Snail, the Raven,
many complexions, the thick
black hair.  They learn
they are not my sisters

for I am white
though I would tell them— have —
that my road into
this town, too, was long
and bitter and began

breathlessly, silently,
under a chief still
called wise one.

II.

Out in the low and
wind-shriven villages
winter is warming its
hands on the flat roofs.
Women are making
fire inside, and food, and

mukluks for the babies.
Women are making
light, trying, trying

to shine it over the
whole house, even
to the dark rooms of

cold, where savage
rights of the old
body over the

young, the great
body over the small
are preserved

as the oldest charter.

III.

They swagger out of the
Avenue Bar at midnight with
some tonight's Honey

laughter that's a dare to
make them scared of
you or any buddy.  They
wear wallets on chains
and cowboy boots worn to
the cardboard heels

and their hair wants
washing.  A few still
young — too ripe too

early — figure even
this picking is better
than being handed

over without so
much as a beer.  Who
might any of them

have become
in even the least
of the villages

had Christ not
come with his cross
and bottle

of vodka, his father's
god-awful rights
to

the daughter,
the sister,
the son?