Totem Poles

Several years ago, Barbara and I went to Alaska.  While there we saw several sites where totem poles were displayed.  It is an ancient way of recording the family history of mostly Northwestern Native Americans.  I found the explanations interesting, but most of their interpretive data came from folks generations removed from the original artisans.  I wrote the following poem to convey my impressions.

Stake Your Totem

Chop the tree.

Carve the wood.

Tell the story of your clan.

Stake your totem

on the seashore

hoping all the world will see.

Who will be left

when others pass

to pass the epic on?

Unlock the past

without a key?

Learned men

will cogitate,

extrapolate, and pontificate.

But, in the end they speculate.

Dennis Price