Darkening blue
A warrior dances
A fading fire
Spindly fingers, tear-filled notes
An old man lingers, drums beat
Josiah - this poem is a tanka, a Japanese form of poetry that consists of a haiku plus two additional lines. Haiku especially seeks to capture singular moments of time, of being. But my heart has lately been especially burdened for the utter mistreatment of the First Nations of North America by Europeans and American settlers; I think Manifest Destiny has been one of the most tragic and torrid doctrines to have ever come upon our nation. I wanted to capture a moment in time as I mourned what's been lost. Finally, the cover photo is of a painting that hangs in the Smithsonian Museum's National Gallery of Art in Washington DC.
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