Trail of Tears Beans

“This historic heirloom was carried from Georgia to Oklahoma by members of the Cherokee Nation who were banished from their homelands by the U. S. government in the late 1830s. A sleek black bean when dried, Cherokee Trail of Tears can also be eaten fresh.” – Seed packet

I buy them online, from strangers
whose faces I do not know, whose gardens

I’ve never tasted. I do not know the
stories of my grandmother’s people,

save for what I’ve read: the death march
through rain, stifling heat, and snow

salt pork sickening the people, old and infants
left in fields and forests or beside the road,

hastily buried,
if buried at all.

All the while, this miracle rustled
in apron pockets: hope, small and dark

another garden someday when we get there
a bit of home, a flavor, food our bodies

understand like language. Food our
ancestors ate. Sleek black beans, one part

of a holy trinity in my palm, two hundred
generations of plants, five for humans,

my line diluted, paled while the beans stayed dark.
I want to say thank you, I want to say I’m sorry

but the words are so small. I press them into
the earth, build a trellis, offer water.

E. D. Watson is a certified Practitioner of Poetic Medicine, yoga teacher, and library worker in Central Texas. They are also the author of three poetry collections, Via Dolorosa & Advent Wreath, Honey in the Vein, and Anorexorcism. Find them online @EeeDeeWatson