Cloud Man’s “White Clay”

April 12, 2011 at 9:38 pm (creative writing, culture, education, environment, ethics, food, history, Indigenous People, Lakota, life, Native Americans, Pine Ridge Indian reservation, poetry, politics, random)
Tags: borders, childhood, children, Cloud Man, creative writing, culture, family, food, history, Howard's Store, ice cream, identity, Lakota, language, life, local history, memories, musings, Native Americans, Nebraska, pain, Pine Ridge Reservation, poem, poetry, random, thoughts, White Clay, Writing

@ Guest Poet, Cloud Man

            White Clay

This is a border place. Like all borders.

There is a feel that defies interpretation.

 

How does one define nostalgia for pain,

I miss my father beating my mother Or

When my mother drank she cursed my father.

I used to eat bologna sandwiches, potato chips for dinner

Dinner? Or was it a snack it was what I had for lunch?

 

If I went north towards home

If I went south into tomorrow

 

Some have made this border place a cause

I spent hours of my childhood here

 

How does one know of borders

When one becomes the border

 

I am still in between places

I still have the last potato chip bag

And that bologna skin ring

From the last night at White Clay

 

 

                                        White Clay II

There used to be an ice cream shop,

Across from Howard’s Store

One Sunday I counted all the families

Coming for floats

Chocolate and vanilla cones.

On Howard’s Store wall

Were Lakota words.

If you could read Lakota

These were items he sold

A grocery list

I used to sit in the shade by that store