Tramps

(with thanks to Gary Ferguson and to Marley Shebala)

"Tramps," the Paiute call us.
The Zuni say "visitors" —
A more gracious term, I suppose.
But the meaning is the same:
We are the rootless ones.

We are the ones who buy houses
And call them homes,
Who later sell and leave them behind.
Who feel the heartache and the tug,
But leave just the same.
As if we could take our land,
Our memories, our groundedness—
The graves of our grandfathers—
And toss it all on a potlatch pile,
Abandoning our very place in this world,
There with a heap of household goods.

We have powerful words in law:
Deeds and rights, liens and easements;
We exchange money and tell ourselves
That we have found our homes.
But we do not own that ground
Any more than it owns us.
The ones who own it are the ones who stay.

In time, like us, our deeds will be undone,
Our homes made insubstantial, liquidated,
And their proceeds disbursed
Among our displaced legatees.