Expression Of Age

I tread through the waving grasses, bristling and thick
The sun beating down in yellow rays onto the verdant pits
Across the flowers and herbs on the rolling terrains
Where I walk, concealed by straw, lying in wait
The earth humid, but the air dry
Withering under cloudless skies
The empty land dotted with shrubs of green
A vast expanse of land unreached
But now you creep into our lands, it grows smaller each day
And with your actions, you set it closer to flames
Wild indigo sprinkled ‘cross the never-ending plains
Amongst the goldenrod and dandelion haze
The bright orange of the flowers of blazing stars
Dance with the lemon sunflowers afar
Woody plants spread over the valleys and hills
With wetlands scattered across the middle
The ochre fields met with the searing gales
A dry crackling wind burning as it wails
Setting the grasses to flame
The reeds ablaze.
To grow again from the ashes alive
A cycle of soot to blossoms across time
But with each warming day the land stays bare
The burning flames continue to leech the air
They destroy, they obliterate the golden lands
Too fast for us to escape no matter how we ran
The changing climate has buried us in an ashtray
So, I must hunt, I must hope for life to spring out of the gray
The blue ponds of far and few
Poisoned by the drills and water screws
The grasses that held turkeys and geese
Where the wild chickens squawked frenzied and free
They have disappeared like these lands, they are few and far between
Those would hide from my coyotes skulking in the shade
Those who would run from the wolf packs of howls and raids
Our prey would doge the bison that crumpled the bright meadow
They would lace around the bobcat lurking in shadows
They are not to be found, they have faded away
But the new sites and the transforming days
Have kept not just my friends, but your own kind at bay
The Cheyenne tribe who live off of these empty grounds
Are drained of water, thirsty in the razing droughts
The Blackfoot, the Ojibwe, on barren lands they live
Though their livelihood has been taken, they always remember to give
Unlike you and your kind, they only take, see what to gain
But asthe world crumbles we must replenish the plains
Lest they burn to the ground in ashes again.