End of the Old World

(Taken from a Nauset tribal legend of the first sighting of the Mayflower in 1620.)

On a sand dune
overlooking the white-capped sea,
the Wampanoag boy rested
on a driftwood log,
shaded by poison sumac whose dry white berries,
Wabanung had taught
him and his sisters
never to touch.
In the sunlight, his eyes squinted
at dried cornstalks piled high by his cousins
for Ebiyan spirits
who often returned to the long beach
stretching from land's end in the north
to the wigwams of the Nauset in the south.
The harvest moon had twice set,
leaving a chill in the offshore breeze; today
the boy valued the buckskin leggings
and fringed tunic made by Weetamoo, his mother.
Blinking again, he spotted a bobbing white cloud
far out on the Kitcikami Sea.
Was it an Algonquin warship?
But what of its white woven sails, high as a grandfather pine?
On board, a black-bearded man
in a glistening breastplate,
stood above people, stretching arms skyward.
It was morning
that November dav in 1620
but for the Eastern people
who had lived here for 10,000 years,
the sun was setting on their world,
never to rise again.