Dynasty

The feather of a heron,
the wings of a crow
stirred my wandering feet
beside the riverbanks of my youth,
my namesake. I am John Heron*,
a child of the Crow people,
born the year after a great war, 1812.
I fell in  love with a white woman
and she with me, her pioneering spirit
a match to my own.
Together we traveled the dusty paths,
and explored wilder terrain.
The birth of a tiny daughter caused us to remain
rooted in a village, where illness took me away
to the next life, the next world to roam,
leaving my only girl to one day found
a wandering, roaming, winged dynasty.

Tracy Plath

*John Heron was my Native American ancestor. He fathered one child, my great great grandmother, and from her sprang my entire paternal family. He died of pneumonia at the age of 21 in 1834.