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Cherokee smoke

26/10/2017

12 Comments

 
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I have just got back to England from a 4 1/2 week ramble through the Southern States of America, through Georgia, Tennessee and North Carolina. The first three weeks were spent trekking along the Benton Mackaye trail backpacking, camping and looking out for bears. One of the several reasons for the adventure was to walk though the land of the Cherokee Indians who had once lived in these forests, creating a distinctive and rich of culture of their own, They had tried valiantly and intelligently to accommodate the growing influx of settlers into their lands but were betrayed in treaty after treaty by the new American government, in the end most shamefully by President Andrew Jackson who forced them move out of their homelands and across to the west on a trek known as The Trail of Tears in which 4000 people died. After that vast areas of the old forest was cut down by logging companies and settlers clearing farmland. A few of the Cherokee managed to cling on living in remote and inaccessible places to now form the Eastern Band of the Cherokee Indians.  And in many places the forest has returned growing back over abandoned settlements, into designated National Parks and on land returned to the wilderness. Much of this poem was written in my head as we trekked through the greenwood. I would scribble remembered lines down in my notebook by headtorch light as I lay in my tent at night listening to the song of cicadas and distant sound of animals in the dark. This is still a draft

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Mist damp and warm,
Eddying in clouds

Through gaps in the trees
My knees aching, and the tendrils of the wood
Grasping at my weary boots.
I crossed the line into the wildness of trees.
In the borderlands,
In the bear darkness.
​

And amongst the Hickory and the Hemlock,
Watched by the unblinking salamander
Where the sacred cedar holds the spirits of those,
Who slept upon this springy earth,
I trekked through with my light-footed companion
Up the broken trail.

Gasping and cursing in the pagan heat,
Pausing for breath as the sweat
Ran into my eyes,
Already sticky with spider’s webs and dirt.
I envied her grace and her weightlessness
And the way the greenwood wrapped itself around her.​

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Whilst I, a temporary alien,
Bending double, leaning on sticks,
Empty of thought
Looked down and saw
Mica glistening like desperate snow flakes
On the steaming griddle,
And pushing through the long earth
Hearts-a-bustin’
  and Jack‘O Lantern
And purple Aster.
Which made me pause
Sling off my pack and rest against a rock
And look up through the tumultuous leaves
And listen for those who once slipped through the shadows
Vanishing like fireflies dancing in the dark.

​These trees are not that old I am told,
And the brown river is bursting’ with water dredged
With the rising of the last moon from the deep Atlantic,
​So that each prodigal moment is carried back to the forgiving sea
The Jewel Weed and Poison Ivy are of this season,
​Each day ends
What then really remains then of the memory of the Cherokee?

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.I remember someone once told me
​That the skin on your hand,
Renews itself every five years,
Replicating the scars and stories,
Of childhood and adolescence.
Your hand holds memories not artefacts
And so it may be
With the forest of the Cherokee,

The tale before the tears is still written
Upon the endless forest which is
A serpent coiled around the,
The land,
Like a dragon around a hoard
Of
copper, iron, gold, manganese and garnets.
Written also so it
Lingers in the tangled growth and the way of the fox
And the falls and the path to

Asginayi  - ghost place - which is also Skeinah
And with these memories
The smoke rises,
In the space between the longing
In the dreams of old fires
​In the shiver in the waters of the forgotten creek.

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.And as the trees danced in the light of Autumn
I heard in the chant of the cicada and frog
​A old
 remembering and their song,
“There was wildness in us
Wild in the way our blood
Flowed with the Red Wolf and the Black Bear,
Wild as the dappling light
Flickering on the Copperhead
Wild in the sacred moment and the awareness of being seen
Wild as we rose with the smallest of things
To great heights.”

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 'Cherokee Smoke'  is the first output of my Gone To Look For Americas Project: an exploration in poetry, prose, song and performance of the Beautiful Broken Dream that is at the heart and soul of America and in all of us. Planned are two albums, a book and a tour.
​For further information contact Steve at steve@stevebonham.net
12 Comments
Simon Crosse
27/10/2017 01:30:31 am

I like it Steve.
I have read it twice , but like all conscious art, it needs to be read (by me at any rate) several times, in order to deepen my understanding.
I was conscious of Seamus Heaney, and T.S. Eliot as I was reading it.
I would question the punctuation in places.
You invoke the Cherokee spirit.

Reply
Steve
31/10/2017 06:23:36 pm

Thank you Simon for your kind words - you would be right to question the punctuation !

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Natalia Wieczorek
28/10/2017 10:59:42 am

Steve has an incredible way with words that evoke the most wonderful images.

Reply
steve
31/10/2017 06:24:23 pm

Thank you very much Natalia - I really appreciate that.

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Gary Haigh
31/10/2017 04:28:21 pm

Like it. very nicely written, Steve

Reply
Steve
31/10/2017 06:21:39 pm

Many thanks Gary

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Liz
31/10/2017 10:12:13 pm

I can see that the words are just pouring out - you must have been very inspired. Keep it going! (BTW also noticed the punctuation - we're a tough crowd :))

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steve
3/11/2017 07:21:26 pm

It was an astonishing environment Liz - very hard not to be inspired

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Charles
1/11/2017 09:31:56 am

Steve. My education in this area was through reading "The Last of the Mohicans". Good work with the flow of ideas.

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steve
1/11/2017 09:36:16 am

A brilliant book read a very long time ago ! I heard the film is great too though I have never seen it

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Everett Irvine
3/11/2017 05:43:37 pm

I had the honor of picking up Steve and Dinny at Wilscot Gap on the BMT (Benton Mackey hiking trail) the day Tropical Storm Irma (formerly the hurricane Irma) hit the Blue Ridge area. We instantly hit off, maybe because we’re all artists. In the thirty minute drive to town, I tried to connect with them, not sure I would ever see them again. Lucky for me they called me the next day to take them back where I picked them up. I enjoyed the conversation we share. We shared out love for nature.

Since then we’ve become friends on Facebook. Hopefully, we get to meet again. Maybe put in a few miles together.

Really enjoyed meeting both of you!

Reply
steve
3/11/2017 06:22:13 pm

Thank you Everett - the meeting was a great moment of serendipity for us !

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    ​Psychologist
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    Wide brimmed hat. Long dark coat. Guitar slung on back. 21 years on the road. A 100,000 miles and half a thousand hotel rooms. From the Berlin Wall to Atlas Mountains, from Sahara Desert to the streets of Hong Kong: a memory brewed in the long simmering soup of people and place. A man who has learned to watch and to listen, to walk and talk in the ebb and flow of meeting and parting. He is a chronicler of the human spirit in words and music.


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  • Home
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