THE DOCENT
Stonewall War -
Ludlow Massacre -
They aren't in many history books.
People with forgotten names -
pawns in a bigger game.
Maxwell Land Grant and Rockefeller’s CF&I -
heard of them?
They won.
But the docent remembered.
Sit on the curb where the crooked brick street
hits the Santa Fe Trail.
Listen as he parades their history past -
the forgotten ones.
He came from the East
and he heard the stories
of these people.
With a coke, a cigarette
and a listening smile
he marshaled the ghostly witnesses.
He spoke for them
least they become forever lost -
the forgotten ones.
Mexicans in the river plazas
forced out
because the boundary
was moved in the night.
Why not move them also?
That river
and all that coal were too valuable
to leave to lesser folks.
Fight a war
with Maxwell Land Company?
Not a Chance -
not if you wanted to continue living.
The Rockefeller collection of tongues
gave unions no voice.
Sweaty men, coal dirty
they needed no spoken language
to understand injustice.
So they spoke the language of strike
and their families were massacred.
Forced out of their homes
onto the plains
into tents soon burnt to ashes.
Rockefeller won.
The docent came to be a westerner,
a storyteller for justice.
Sit on the curb
before his parade
and listen to voices
he gave to the forgotten ones.
So, maybe the docent won.
I hear him
whenever I see the corner of Santa Fe Trail
and the red brick road.
He helped me hear
a Polish miner and a Mexican farmer.
But I can't hear
Rockefeller or the Maxwell people.