the Removal Act

I come from one of the tiniest reservations you ever saw. It stands at the edge of a city and lives at the mouth of a spring.
In my youth I would sit on a hilltop just above my grandpa’s land and look out at the thousands of lights from the city just beyond the old highway. And Here my thoughts found their way into the sky. I’d make up stories of what was going on out there in those lights or sometimes I’d just sit there and sing.
When I wasn’t among the oaks and earth, I’d sit in my room writing down all my thoughts and sing to my parent’s old records and my older brother’s mixed tapes. And this was the ground I stood on for my first 20 years. And Here is where I come From.
It came time to leave my youth for the world within the lights, for they seemed to call me from the hilltop all those years. But I soon became lost within all the concrete, for my thoughts could not be heard here. And I remembered the hilltop I had come From was made up of roots and earth and that I’m made up of these same things as well.
And I found that while I was away the lights and the metal and the concrete found their way to the mouth of the spring. And so it seemed right that I should let my roots search the earth for the right place to find their way into the ground.
And Here I chose a path to make sense of all my thoughts and the life I had been writing down for years by putting it all to sound. And then the hope and the vision might be that these songs find their way onto the records and mixed tapes of others and quite possibly sung on other hill tops and then these thoughts might find their way back out into the sky again.
And so I left my fears along the honest earth and walked on, calling out under dark skies for truth among noise built up by other mens thoughts. And I found my own path and on it my song became wild and overgrown as I walked deeper into the unknown. And my mouth and body became unhinged Here and I stared into the face of my own and it spoke all my secrets aloud and at once. And I poured all I had in me out. From mouth to record. And this was how I found my own ways. And I now know no other way than this.
And Here is where I come From. And Here is where I am going. And so Here it stands that my words and voice will have their chance to meet the sky.