When I was driven down from the Puerto Rican mountains
at age nine, I glimpsed a girl stooping
to wash her breasts just outside the fence.  Mother said,
Don’t look, but Father said, Nonsense, she’s beautiful. 

I’d made my best friend by the time I turned ten.
I see his grin but no longer recall his name.  I know he
doesn’t live where he did then, anyway, nor do I.

In France, I lived in a dormitory, studying literature
and biology with other randy boys and girls
kept apart by a heavy steel door.  I fell in love,
but she moved away and so did I.  I learned ping pong.

I moved from place to place.  I married twice. 
In later years, I finally settled down and stayed put.
I became a father.  I lived a life.

I attend high school reunions.  The girl I loved
is a grandmother with whom I share a dance.

A t-shirt we all wear declares what I was.
Yet my memories stitch together in random ways.

A picnic in a Roman ruin, a dog buried
next to a foreign field, a girl bending.

Whereabouts unknown
 
Barefoot,
her toes in charcoal
grip the earth.
 
Her pubis,
a suggestion,
a single curved line
like the mountain
behind her.
 
Beneath her breasts,
the arms cross.
She casts her own
shadow
which is walking
east
off the paper.

dear supreme court, i’m writing to ask
if perhaps you can do something different.
like others in my field, i’ve followed your cases about tribes
since law school, so roughly 10 years,
and read and reread the old ones hoping to find
some kernel of whatever my client needed at the moment.
now that i’m teaching your words, i’m starting to learn them
by heart. 

working for tribes was difficult even
as an outsider who could get a new job if she wanted.
i know you exalt America’s dream to see through
divides and status and appreciate the true person
effortlessly.  but the ease
with which i could turn away, get a new job, stop
reading your indian law decisions separated
me from the natives i represented.  still, i felt their wounds
at the things you had taken, and reading your words
that took away promised lands, or ability to govern, or money, or water
produced a howl of pain.  sometimes i’d turn
to someone i worked with and make a joke of what you’d said
to try to quiet it. 

do you remember the kennewick man, that case
you didn’t hear but probably followed?  well his 9,000-
year-old skeleton that the tribes wanted to rebury out of respect
and to quiet his spirit, the scientists found a spear lodged in it,
an old wound that must have wracked his small frame
every moment until his death.  all the tribes and their members
are like that.  the things you have taken--words that were spoken,
dances and practices, reservations, small rights
over shrunk territories–pierce a hole
that hobbles even the bravest.  working for them, i sometimes felt it in myself
but somehow stopped expecting
anything different.  then i was gleeful if in a new
decision, something wasn’t taken. 

now i teach students who, before
my class, knew little of any of this.  i recount the losses
you’ve inflicted.  most of these students
aren’t wounded.  they walk into class believing in something,
believing in you.  my job is to describe every injustice
neutrally, my job is to take the america they believe in
away from them, slowly at first, the way you did, from the 1830s
onward, accelerating at certain points and not slowing down now
since 1978.  i’m not sure you’d want to look in their faces and see
what you’ve done, their outrage and frustration class after class. 
perhaps you could care about that if the wounds
are too difficult to understand or too necessary.  think back to the student
who wants something to believe in,
finds instead a homeland
incomprehensible except as a thief
so skilled in language and so powerful, he gets away with it.