Crow Woman, by Geraldine Connolly

Is-sap -ah’-ki, Crow Woman, was an Arickaree, born in the village of that tribe,
located on the Missouri, some distance below the Mandan
villages. 

Mrs. Kipp paid a fabulous sum for her.
Thirty horses, a gun, two dozen tins
of tobacco, ten blankets were traded
for Crow Woman and her daughter.

Her tribe had gone out on a buffalo hunt.
All were killed except for the young woman.
Crow Woman had no children of her own
but loved her almost-daughter,

child of a dead wife of Lone Otter.
Except for this love, she would have escaped
before the setting of the sun, fled
through the woods and returned to her people.

Now Crow Woman labors over laundry,
scrubs the rugged pine boards of the dining room
and carries cups of bone china and vanilla biscuits
for the ceremony of pour and sip they call “tea.”

~~~

Geraldine Connolly is the author of four poetry collections, Aileron, Hand of the Wind, Food for the Winter and Province of Fire, as well as a chapbook, The Red Room. Her work has appeared in numerous journals and has been included in many anthologies. She has won two NEA fellowships in Creative Writing and the Yeats Society of New York Poetry Prize. She lives in Tucson, Arizona.  Her website is www.geraldineconnolly.com