Nothing remains of
my family. I,
alone for days, and -
Oh, Lord! Yours is a dark hand,
a cursor of judgment
that drives me.
My daughter!
My darling Marie,
her leer broken when we forded a river
twenty feet deep– twenty feet!
What taskmaster would
command such suicide?
What cruel whip values time over life?
Fifty miles a day– a devil's pace!
My wife Margaret, lost within days;
victim of a choleric disease
it seems unworthy medical attention.
No, the Fort was not worth detour.
These shortcuts,
they have brought me,
empty handed to a promised land.
My drive, my life, my family.
The price? So apparently small
for record time.
Whom will I now till
this fresh soil for?
Or salt these four bison I've shot? (Four!)
No one.
I am alone now,
abandoned among pixels.
-Kuan Butts
