From the Sea to the Swamp
A poem on my prayer run through South Kingstown, RI
A poem about my prayer run from Narragansett to the Great Swamp Massacre Monument in South Kingstown, RI on February 19, 2023. The monument commemorates an engagement that pitted English colonial forces against a Narragansett fort during King Phillip’s War on December 19, 1675. While English forces suffered heavy losses in the initial assault, they eventually breached the walls and proceeded to burn the town, indiscriminately killing the Narragansett people inside. My ancestors were in command that day. We live in the world they created with their fires.
Narragansett Beach
57-years-old military patches
Enthused by plyos, he guesses age and distance
Convo on the why: not just another training run.
This one is special.
Know about the Great Swamp Massacre? 1675. Ancestors 11-miles from this spot.
Mind blown. Gonna read up!
He believes in the spirit of it. The layers under our feet. The things we don’t know or hear or see but affect us all.
Gives a fist bump as I roll.
What will I feel? Numb? Indifferent? Ugly crying as I run?
A bang or a whimper? Numinous presence or a slab of rock?
Ghosts for me in that clearing in the Swamp?
Dig my fingers into the beach.
Touch the tide and turn west.
Quiet off-season seaside streets cute houses condos shops
Used to be a slave port.
Turn off on the bike path. Easy. Quieter here.
Open intention, breath in my body.
None of this would be here without them.
See houses and shops like they’re mine. I am them.
Inheritance. Heritage, they call it with their flags.
Oblivion: nobody knows who I am.
Generic white guy jogging through their towns, smiling nodding skritching the kitty near the old mill.
“Do you know who I am?!” entitled rich bluebloods say.
Do you know this path this house this mill this shop this street this sidewalk this park are all here because of them?
Does that make them mine?
Yes. Mine. We did this. Heritage.
The stonewalls sinking into the marsh: also mine.
300-ish years, still mine. We built them.
The people we enslaved built them.
Built them farmed the land for us hauled our goods to the pier back at the beach I just came from.
Rolled like gangsters, we did.
The walls are mine. The stones are not.
The land embraces them back. Sinking into the marsh.
Rail trail ends at Amtrak. Pit stop. Cross tracks run southwest.
Almost there now. Wide fast road. Pick up the pace.
Light industrial zoning thanks to us.
Still, the forest isn’t cut down…again.
Because stone walls, calling cards of clear-cuts past, still bound the ghost farms.
Road to the Monument: turn left.
Dirt. Soft silent dirt tracks. Pass the gate keep going until it circles in the forest.
Step over the chain.
Soft silent sandy serene through still air where the forest breathes deep
Pine moss cedar oak boggy forest swamp holding together in tangled embrace.
Deep, dense, holy.
What steeled determination slashed them open
To kill the ones inside?
How far did the shots and cries echo across their frozen defenseless pools?
Stop and listen. Northeast Regional singing rails 80 mph whisper out there in the Swamp. Silence.
Arch of trees a threshold frames the stones.
A clearing. A mound. Rough-cut obelisk besieged.
By us. We were in charge.
Slash through cut down burn it all burn them all
To take, purify, to be!
Be remembered forever: why they built this place. For them. For us. For me.
But we don’t need this. We have freeways airports high rises strip mines pipelines burn it all make us immortal.
Still there is fire here. Ashes in soft threshold soil.
Three little circles: ashes of ceremony past and future.
Still quiet peaceful sanctuary of the Swamp
Shells, smooth stones, pine cones litter the pedestal
Pottery. Basketry.
Tender offerings living grief
Besieging stones swallowed eclipsed by living love holding soaring pillar
Resistance, defiance, survivance, memoriam.
These little offerings are all I feel. All I really see.
Their sanctuary, their place.
Do they know who I am?
Does it matter?
Breathe the grief-laden air.
I crack.
Not now. Later. Little moments alone.
I’ve brought no offering; did not expect life here. Not like this.
It was good to be alone for this. It was hard to walk away.
It still is.
