Old Woman

by Ethel Mortenson Davis

She dropped her eyes
when a white woman
said, good morning.

Silence
is all there was.

Perhaps she remembered
the Long Walk
and what the whites did:

How they starved
and killed
the Navajo,
down to five thousand—

how they decimated them
until their chromosomes
layed waste
and disease set in,

diseases where the people
cannot go out in the sun
without dying.

Silence is what she spoke.

6 Comments

Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, Poetry

6 responses to “Old Woman

  1. EXCEPTIONALISM AND THE WAR ON TERROR

    Sometimes they forget
    (Perhaps that should read “Somehow”)
    Theirs is a nation
    a) founded on genocide
    b) built on the backs of slaves

  2. and yet that silence speaks volumes.

  3. I am “there” with this one… thank you, Ethel.

  4. “Silence is all there was”, yet, love is all there is…

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