All winter long there was silence

All winter long there was silence, some words
fell, although they were hardly audible

through the haze and the low light, the secret 

mist of a cold world. But still voices reached

like beacons into the freezing air,

not to keep warm by some hidden fireplace,

but rather to illuminate what really had happened.

As a child, I was well familiar with those impenetrable nights, 

watch the fires on the hillside, signs

as messages, rising smoke their exclamation marks.

A skill, of some sort, soundless and visible over

vast distances.

Whenever the warriors saw them, they cheered

and every now or then, 

they responded with counter signals. 

But they barely spoke, never in long sentences. 

What they meant was expressed by dancing,

in sacred movements, twisting and turning 

to the rhythm of the night by the fires

and pleading with the stars overhead to reveal the future. 

I still remember the medicine man,

muttering my name, over and over, 

as though it was essential for my cure, 

when they found my family  slaughtered 

and I was the last one, who had seen it all 

and still had a tongue to speak.