Under the Long Grass

By Dick Eiden

Dick is a writer, attorney, and political activist living in Vista, California. He is the author of Paying the Rent, an autobiographical account of anti-war and civil rights activism in the 1960's and beyond. 

The following poem is a reflection on the painting, "Your Attention Please" by William Gullette.

Under the Long Grass

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You can see the story in the shape of the mountain
knuckles of rock scraped bare over centuries

washed onto high-country plains, good for corn
when snows were gone and game was plentiful.

The people camped between the knuckles in winter,
and at their back when enemies attacked, the bodies

burned on pyres above the tree line, spread light
across the valley like a beacon toward heaven,

ashes falling on everything open to the sky,
ashes of villages on top of one another, cold

dead campfires, bones, grinding stones where
women worked and children played beside the river

still there, under the long grass.

​                                                                                                                                                       10/15/19