They go out in the country
with their cameras and their case,
to try to find some relics
of another time and race.

And they go up to the Big Horn
or across to Wounded Knee,
to try to find some kind of sign
of how things used to be.

And they dig down in those battlefields
as prospectors did of old,
only now they're digging down for bones,
where as before they dug for gold.

And some one calls excitedly
that they've found an arrow head,
made out of a wagon wheels rim,
somebody said.

And they dust it down and write their notes
and take their photographs
but all they see is that arrow head,
not the pictures of the past.

They don't hear the war cries,
they don't hear the screams,
they don't see the blood flow red
along those winding streams.

They don't see the wounded,
and they don't see the dead,
all they see is a well preserved,
iron arrow head,

Then some one finds a button
on a shred of navy blue,
laying near and arrow shaft
that another says is Sioux,

But they don't see the suffering
they don't see the pain,
they don't see the dead of both sides,
across this vast terrain.

All they see are artefacts,
among the Greasy Grass,
Minnie balls or broken swords
from those battles of the past.

They can't listen to the orders called,
by Custer to his men,
or Sitting Bull nor the Indian Gall,
as they rode to slaughter them.

No all they have is what was left,
once the smoke had cleared
and nature had reclaimed the land
for a hundred, fifty years.

Yes all they have are rusted swords,
or flattened shards of lead,
miles and miles of empty hills,
and an iron arrow head.


By S.E.Ralph...

31-5-2015