Pat Vermillion received three first place awards from the Poetry Society of Virginia. The following poem from Pat is one of her older poems (1995). Pat writes that she read through the Parish Register one day…and the poem emerged. The names in the poem are from the very early period and came from South and North Dakota or Niobrara.
The Parish Register
(for Sioux students who attended Hampton Normal and Agricultural School and St. John’s Church)
December’s slanted light falls
from high rectangular windows
on pages of baptisms, marriages and burials.
Yellow Bird, Feather Flute, Cracking Wing—
their Sioux names, fluttering quills
create illuminations, like those penned
in medieval manuscripts.
Scribbled in margins
Pine Ridge, Rosebud, Lower Brule
their Niobrara homes
In the north narthex
students knelt, surrounded
by stained-glass Saints. They sang all verses
of Amazing Grace, read psalm-prayers, watched
changing church year colors, waited and wept
for a Second Coming and Wovoka’s prophesy,
The dead will rise, Buffalo return
and oppressors disappear forever.
At school, plow dust or carpentry sounds
covered their chant:
My horse be swift in flight
Even like a bird
My horse be swift in flight
bear me now in safety
far from enemy arrows
with streamers and ribbons red.
Late at night they left buildings
spoke forbidden Lakota
danced the outlawed Ghost Dance
and again heard the heart of holy earth.
The parish register tells nothing more
of returns to reservations
forced marches or starvation
but December’s slanted light falls
on young and old, frozen under snow
whiter than high holy day frontals
while Yellow Bird, surrounded,
whistled Amazing Grace
spread martyrs’ red tapestries
and whirled a Ghost Dance at Wounded Knee.
Originally published in St. John’s Epistle, July/August 2007.