My people (?) with guns
I was offered the Birthright Trip several times
and on each occasion, friends came home telling me
you should’ve seen our people with guns
I fired my first live round when I was forty in the company
of kin from East Tennessee mountains, good Christians all
and none of them eligible for Aliyah
My people with guns. They have wild turkeys where I live
great birds in exquisite Technicolor; I collect their feathers
I’ve even seen the great ungulates grazing in the Badlands
of the West, blissfully unaware just how they were re-introduced
On my wall is a drum made from their skins
I also have a ram’s horn I can blow to signal
the end of the Days of Awe
I hear it blowing.