Alex Posey - 5 Very Short Poems (c. 1900-1908)

Forgotten Poems #122

    
              —: A Reverie :—

       The sky bends over in a sweet
       Forgiveness; earth is filled with light;
       And mellow autumn hues, soft winds
       That croon of summer lands; and thro'
       The brooding stillness comes a strain
       Of music, and, as leaves are swept
       Upon the river's tide away,
       My thoughts drift off and on to God.
    

   
              —: Mother & Baby :—

            Tired at length of crying,
            Laughing, cooing, sighing,
       The baby lies so qui't and still
            Scarce breathing in his sleep;
       The mother watches, half-inclined
            To hide her face and weep.
   

       
              —: On the Capture and Imprisonment
                                   of Crazy Snake :—

       Down with him! Chain him! Bind him fast!
            Slam to the iron door and turn the key!
       The one true Creek, perhaps the last
            To dare declare, “You have wronged me!”
       Defiant, stoical, silent,
            Suffers imprisonment!

       Such coarse black hair! Such eagle eye!
            Such stately mien!—how arrow-straight!
       Such will! Such courage to defy
            The powerful makers of his fate!
       A traitor, outlaw,—what you will,
            He is the noble red man still.

       Condemn him and his kind to shame!
            I bow to him, exalt his name!
       

   
              —: Flowers :—

       When flowers fade, why does
            Their fragrance linger still?
       Have they a spirit, too,
            That death can never kill?
       Is it their Judgement Day
            When from the dark, dark mould
       Of April and May
            Their blooms again unfold?
   

    
              —: What My Soul Would Be :—

       What mountain glens afar
       And woodland valleys are
       To echoes in the air,
       My soul would be
            To harmony.
    

Alex Posey (1873-1908; a.k.a. ‘Alexander Lawrence Posey’) was born in Eufaula in the Creek (Muscogee) Nation; “His father was Lewis H. Posey, a Scotch-Irish native of the Creek nation, born about the year 1841 and reared by a Creek woman who lived near Fort Gibson, after his parents—originally from Texas—died... He was a jolly, mirth-loving man, who never lost an opportunity to perpetrate a practical joke, and was said to have been the only white man of his time who could speak the Creek language perfectly.”

The eldest of 12 children, Posey belonged to the Wind Clan, through his mother’s lineage; “Nancy Philips, a Creek woman, daughter of Pohos Harjo, belonged to the Wind Clan... and is a member of the Tuskegee Town or Band of the Muskogee Nation.” Posey said of his parents; “My father was a self-educated man of uncommon intelligence, with a philosophical and scientific turn of mind, while my mother, unable to speak a word of English, is a woman of rare native sense.” (The Poems of Alexander Posey, 1910)

Posey attended Bacone College, and studied writing. Later worked at the Indian Journal, where he published his first poems and prose pieces, including the seminal ‘Fus Fixico’ (lit. ‘Heartless Bird’) letters, satirical commentary on local and national political issues, written in the Muscogee dialect. In 1895 Posey represented the Wind Clan on the Creek National Council, and was later the director of a Creek orphanage. In 1901 Posey founded and was the editor of the Eufaula Indian Journal, which attained national recognition for being the first indigenous-published daily newspaper.

“Posey was among the best known men in the Five Civilized Tribes, and was universally spoken of as ‘Alex’ Posey. He disliked the name ‘Lawrence’, and never used it.... In his home life Posey found true happiness. As a husband he was devoted and affectionate. As a father he was loving and indulgent. By temperament he was never exacting, but always appreciative.” (The Poems of Alexander Posey, 1910) Two years after his death in 1908, Minnie Harris—Posey’s wife—collected together his poems and published them in what would become the first widely distributed standalone collection by a Native American poet, in English;—following earlier Native American poets like Jane Johnston Schoolcraft, who’s husband published hand-written copies of her poetry written in the Ojibwe dialect in the 1820s, and John Rollin Ridge, who’s collection Poems was published posthumously in 1868.

“All of my people are poets, natural-born poets, gifted with wonderful imaginative power and the ability to express in sonorous, musical phrases their impressions of life and nature. If they could be translated into English without losing their characteristic beauty and flavor, many of the Indian songs and poems would rank among the greatest productions of all time. Some of them are masterpieces. They have a splendid dignity, gorgeous word-pictures, and reproduce with magic effect many phases of life in the forests—the glint of the fading sunshine falling on the leaves, the faint stirring of the wind, the whirring of insects—no detail is too small to escape their observation, and the most fleeting and evanescent impressions are caught and recorded in most exquisite language. The Indian talks in poetry; poetry is our vernacular—not necessarily the stilted poetry of books, but the free and untrammelled poetry of Nature, the poetry of the fields, the sky, the river, the sun and the stars. In our own tongue it is not difficult for the Indian to compose,—we do it instinctively—but when attempting to write in English we are handicapped: words seem hard, forms mechanical.” (The Poems of Alexander Posey, 1910)

    
              —: After Alex Posey :—
                      by Dick Whyte

                              I.

“Pray to the winds; they will be good helpers.”
             (Delphic Divination, c. 480 b.c.)

       pray to the wind
       when
       only wind will do

       rain & sun & blossoms too:

       everyone knows we have
       to grieve,
       but who knows why

                              II.

       if the one-eyed god
       leaps out of its socket,
       celebrate—

       depending on the season,

       this is the kind of advice
       to be observed

                              III.

       please,
       river i do not tire of you
    

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