The Trail of Crystallized Tears

We wash across the land,
driven by a wind of greed
and fear, herded
from the land to a land,
learning how many ways,
how many times,
a man, a woman, a child
can die: murder
can be accomplished
by more than gun and knife.

We stream in suffering,
torn from the lands
of our ancestors,
a journey begun within
a shame sufficient
in its own death, flowing
a thousand crystallized miles,
the trail of crystallized tears,
to be cast upon, gasping,
a beach of crystallized sands.


This poem is submitted for One Shoot Sunday sponsored by One Stop Poetry. To see other poems based on the photo prompt, please visit the site.

This photo took me in a direction I did not expect to go, a direction not suggested by the photograph or the photographer. I started with a meditation, and ended with the Trail of Tears. You can learn more about the Trail of Tears National Historic Trail at Wikipedia.

Photograph by Roger Allen Baut for One Stop Poetry. Used with permission.