Daniel E. Wilcox

The Last Libation

Jim Town, across the county line

Where many a poor Cheyenne

Emptied his dim future

In the short, sotted glass;

Nothing new of this watery fire,

The forked-tongue libation

Passed from the pallid men

Down to generations of the lost,

To those hunched at the rail-

Descendents of red men who

Counted coup with shining valor-
But these instead pour out their souled

Lives to Chief Bacchus of the bottle;

Restricted to behind the dark bars,

They shuffle the time worn cards,
Then slump, no longer ruling the plains.

But the Rez’s young girl, his cousin,

Only 12, copper-templed and kind,

With glorious raven hair, now

In the gathering Montana dusk

Tips on the dirt walk, sour breathed,

Staggers on the ‘warn’ path

Through Lame Deer village,

And passes down, then gone.

Says another tribe’s brave,

A leader in translation,

My heart is sick…

I will drink no more forever.

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