Following is a poem forthcoming in Same Old Story (CavanKerry Press, 2014) and that is also the subject of an essay, "For the Eye altering alters all," which I will be including in the anthology The Poets' Sourcebook (Autumn House Press, 2013). As the essay explains, I wrote this poem after reading Evan S. Connell's Son of the Morning Star, an unbelievably compelling narrative about how Custer ended up at Little Big Horn. It includes many, many extracts from contemporaneous journals, transcriptions of talk, and other primary sources; and this poem arose from my reading of an enlisted man's description of the aftermath of what was known as the Fetterman massacre. The Sioux retelling is the hero story.

Fear is so variant and situational. I think about this a lot. No matter who is right or wrong in the broad view--and no one could possibly defend the U.S. government's treatment of the plains tribes after the Civil War--the minutiae of evil infiltrate everyone involved in conflict. Blake says exactly this in America: a Prophecy, which is the other primary subject of my essay.

The Fate of Captain Fetterman’s Command

Dawn Potter

            1866

At first light we saw our enemies
on the bluff
silver flashing in their hair

a glory of sun as they rode away laden
with tunics saddles boots arrows
still piercing the cracked boots

piercing our silent comrades
and just visible in the dawn
we saw wolves and coyotes

skulking along the verge
crows buzzards eagles circling
the sun-spattered meadow

but not one white body was disturbed
for we hear that salt permeates
the whole system of our race

which protects us from the wild
to some degree but it was strange
that nothing had eaten the horses either

except for flies which swarmed in thick
like the stench
all day we waited

till the doctor finished his report then
they told us to pack our friends
into the ammunition wagons

this was our job they said to retch
to stumble into the field to grasp
at wrists at ankles dissolving to pulp

under our grip to vomit to weep
to stare at masks pounded bloody with stones
bloated crawling with flies who were they

this was our job but we could not sort
cavalry from infantry all stripped
naked slashed skulls crushed

with war clubs ears noses legs
hacked off and some had
crosses cut on their breasts

faces to the sky
we walked on their hearts
but did not know it in the high grass