Niisha ¹
          Koochiwe? Koochiwekita? ²
Skata ³
          Koochiwe ⁴
Mata niwaakota tasi poonama ⁵

Southward as indicated by the old instructions
of faith and commerce. My lungs draw from wisps

of warm air wafting over my infant’s
dark net of scalp as I warm my knuckles

around the rope. It is best to make an early start.
It is best to unmoor in a cove favored by the red necked

diving birds where peat-warmed exhalations billow
in the northern chill. Each measure of travel returns

to essentials: one fire to the next, one sleeping place
or body of water. Water to water being the original

and eternal map. This Great Lake belongs to the Eries,
but portage is the imperative of all walking creatures.

My arms tremble with the weight of the value
above my head until my grip calluses and my muscles steady.

Nehiwe kiisasilawiipe? ⁶
          Kwiilahi hini saawanwa hoteeweneki ke’haape ⁷

I let the child down now, so they may
cool their feet in the mud and throw rocks

into the stream. If we look to the wet
bottomland, we will see the dance

of crook-legged Rails overturning the chaff.
We are by no measure the only weary

travelers on the trail, with the great Miami
valley to our west lit with the trilling

of millions of songbirds in migration.
Overcrossing Raptor on the way

to continue creating the world.
It is said we so love our children

we carry them until their legs drag
upon the ground. Through beech forest,

mixed oak and sugar maple, and past the swamps
drying to stands of ash and elm, the silky flight

of Black-crowned Night Herons accompany
the generations into the great city of Chillicothe.

Niisha ⁸
          Ha kici’fefi ⁹
Mata nici’fefi ¹⁰

On the trail everyone grows rapidly to their
final height. A bear stands on hind legs

to nose over the serviceberries. In adolescence,
trail trees are staked down by the crown

to the earth, pinned into patterns of shattered
yet ornate growth to mark the way to water,

to portage, to the stone fruit and the hunt.
In adolescence, the child begins to shed natural fear

and roam of his own volition. What can be gleaned
from a bare trail overspilled by concrete?

On this marker, any language followed
by the mark of “x” is no longer spoken.

Some of these trail trees are therefore
no longer translatable.

Ha kineeme hoteeweneki yeetaayaake? ¹¹
          Mata niwaakota ¹²

There are cities you will see and cities
you will need to seek: Great Hiwassee, Olathe,

Cahokia, Roanoke. Salt, shell, obsidian conducted
north overland. Copper, pipestone,

buffalo robes ferried south. Nests of hornets
and yellow jackets at eye level along the trail

herald an unbearably cold winter. Stay warm
at the joints, keep to the threads of bare land

until you find the tree that grows as a husky bulwark
then branches into three trunks.

Hickory fire may be slow to warm, but its heat
is lasting and its coals the most dependable.

A long river bisecting a village
is the blueprint of paradise. When I venture past

the settlements, ye’salaapiikwahaaya niwaakota
tasi poonama ¹³ I portage for the purpose

of trade; becoming a maker, a spy,
a chimera, a blazer, and a barter.

Wa’silawiiya? ¹⁴
          Laapiikwa ¹⁵

I am looking for the pattern
of my relatives across the faces

of strangers. We all quicken in the salt air,
thaw in the southern wind.

One gap in the long chain of mountains
became known as the Cumberland Gap

and after this place, we become guests.
I’ll work diligently hiding caches

in the knotholes of the rick rack fencing
along the back roads. I want to be a peacekeeper

and for the term survival to fall out
of fashion. There is a word in our language

for my child or grandchildren to place
before my name and always know where to find me.

There is nothing we have overlived. These mountains
are among the oldest in the world.