Naked

Naked Pocahontas
cartwheels between
sheaves
of meadow grass
and half truth
history

Little wanton
Matoaka
Turns twelve
Within the rough-cut
walls of sixteen eight
Tobacco men
of Jamestown
elbow through
blue smoke
pulling on
their blackened pipes
grin dirty white
to see her
colored
by the sun

Pocahontas covered now
beneath the plow
in coarse
Christian cloth
Come of age
and married off
Lady Rolphe
baptized Rebecca
Shipped home
on the water
to be offered up
at court
ruffed and behatted
Indian princess
in the muddy
London streets
Persistent mischievous
curious
Bright as bone
bereft of flesh
Dust now
but just enough alive
to turn a somersault
among the living
Still quick
in death
and naked yet.