for the Water Protectors Scientists have discovered seven new planets light years above North Dakota. & everyone who wanted to moveto Canada after the election jokes about the grass being greenerin space & fantasizes about scuba diving in alien oceans, while indigenous people are arrested on their own lands for protecting their waters from blackening like the sky. Burning tipis is not a sign of forgetting, but release.Even the astronaut, free from gravity,comes from this earth that birthed our stories, bodies, songs & thoughts –all things that can be lost in space; in time; in disregard; in a shuttle sent to discover a new site for second homes or resort hotelsnear the sweet scent of the polka dot trees & the peek-a-boo crabs that whistle when it rains. Maybe there are already whole societies built on a history we have yet to discover. Isn’t that thrilling? There is a new solar system out there with room enough for us, all while the police invade, while the worlds turn, while lawyers are briefed, and engineers dream of their fingerprints flying towards a younger star. New & old moons raise tides & fists, and the campgrounds burn & burn away: a scorching memory of what they tried to save.
Reed Adair Bobroff (Navajo) is a poet, playwright, and performer from Albuquerque, NM. His work has been featured in The Breakbeat Poets anthology, Indian Country Today, and on HBO. He graduated from Yale University with a B.A. in Theater Studies and currently researches writing therapy in indigenous communities.
