The Flyer

[Atehequa]

Long have I enjoyed 16th century explorer and artist John White's watercolors of native life in coastal North Carolina. These were Southern Algonquians, very much similar in culture to Virginia's Powhatans.

This poem I wrote some years ago was inspired by John White's painting of an Algonquian shaman or medicine man called - The Flyer

Fully charged and all but bare
Aside from the bird tied in his hair
Skillfully preserved with wings spread
Dancing around the fire, he sings
His arms out like soaring wings
A journey to the realm of the dead

Another memory from so long ago
I can clearly remember the fire’s glow
Magical night in a wild and remote place
From there to here, into another time
Scratched upon paper, put into rhyme
Fading from the page, leaving no trace

From here to there, ever going somewhere
No bonds to break, no relations to tear
Never beholden to god, kings or queens
Soaring over tree tops and ever higher
Arms spread like wings, dances the flyer
Over distant mountains and cloud shrouded scenes

Thoughts swirling like whirlwinds in my head
While the flyer conversed with the dead
In a strange tongue from a forgotten time
With a hawk’s cry he leaped over the flames
Looking into the outer darkness, invoking names
Respected and never to be used in rhyme

Spirits of the dead and those still living
Truthful to each other in times of misgiving
Even more so through days of pain
And feverish nights of maddening unrest
While in the company of ghostly guests
From there to here, never will he remain

The Flyer ~ John White

[dadio]

Good poem & theme.