POV: Message From The Lynching Trees

Here on Turtle Island’s back,
Now called Mary’s land
We stand
Seasoned by the seasons
We lost our innocence.
Woodlands stand unceded
Perhaps you’ve heard of us:
Cherry, Hickory, Poplar, Pine
Pin Oak, Sycamore, Locust

And Willows that weep,

We cycled many sun trips round
Despite the colonizer’s axe
We felt their saw strip down our sides
Flaying fleshy bark.
Tuscarora, Shawnee,Piscataway, Delaware
First Nations fled.
Though left for dead
We bled
Saplings into soil
A record of remembering
Deeds done.

Wailing women coiled our trunks
While on leaf littered dirt they sat.
Braiding our willowy limbs
Into burden baskets and sleeping mats

We winced at being cut and scored
Made into tables and chairs
We understood the way they felt
Objects turned into stairs
Bent down for another’s climbing.

Listen to our forecast tunes
Of weathered dissonance harmonic
Window rattling gust that croons
Dirges rooted in mist demonic.

Ancient leaves sing whining songs
Hear our secret messages
Whispered in rasps and scrapes
As skin is torn and fingers bound
From which there is no escape.

We have tales to tell.

In springtime
When our tiny leaves made muted sound
You hardly heard us speak
With gasps and rasps like gossiping grass
We told you of the meek.
As two James, a John, Asbury swung
On breeze
Fanned panic and shushing leaves
…Anxious

In summer
Though fat and limp with heat
Flapping in the wind as storm advanced
Eleven dangled in July, yet none in August danced
Then two in September filled our high-up crowns
Dragged, shot, swung upside down.
So limp and fat and scorched with thirst.
We waited for a cleansing rain.
None came…….

Fiery Autumn’s leaves of orange and gold
Dove down deep as fifteen of them fell
We chattered in Poplar’s gallows green
Some forty-four tulip tales to tell.

The slung up ropes draped Cherry’s thick arm
Her bough though stout she meant no harm
On woodland’s edge where she grew broad
Her smooth and red-brown bark
Peeled off as stiffened bodies dropped.

Strong, hardy Hickory’s branch was hacked
For smoking meats and cooking
His bonfires could also burn
The flesh of those caught fleeing.

And we have tales to tell:

Of lovers lain beneath our shade
Of laughing young ones chasing round

Of barking dogs chained to our trunks
Of bodies strung up in our crowns
With bulging eyes and purple tongues
Legs trembling …then gone limp.

Of cheering crowds in Sunday suits
With children strapped on shoulders high
Of picnics spread on blanket’s quilt
And swatted flies buzzing round
The blood soaked legs of blacks and browns

Here we’ve known great horror
Standing as we do
To root in stolen Mary’s land
Gone limp and weary too.
First Nations fled, betrayed and plundered
Once proud warriors forced surrender.

We’ve heard the cries of blacks and browns
Called fiends and brutes,
Monsters of the piney woods, all of ill repute
We’ve sniffed their rotting bodies hung
Caressed their strangled necks
That swung
As farmers’ wives and white little girls
Their violence by sheeted men unfurl.
And patty rollers hound the heads
Of wooly haired black boys.

There were no trials, nor justice sought
For bodies black and brown
And sheriffs turned their heads
Away from body broken boys.

In Winter, no sad respite came
Instead we met Jim Crow.
And so
With aching arms and curling leaves
We hid their shame beneath the years
Squalls blew a cooling balm upon
The frosted hearts of relatives
Who went to sleep, afraid to weep
Or mourn
Lest tears and sorrow wipe away
The scourge of being born.

Recording these atrocities Is tiring work we do
But telling truth sustains our growth
On ravaged land through flood and drought
In name for long-sought justice shout!

“Horizon’s change. Our time is now
To witness what we’ve seen
Let willows cease their weeping
And tongues be loosed to speaking
Lest we return to days gone by
Reviving scenes obscene.”

Mitakuye Oyasin/All My Relations
Elayne Bond Hyman