Everything She Knows Goes Up in Smoke
Deerfield Village, Massachusetts, February 29, 1704

The night before, her hands chapped and stupid,
Joanna dropped a redware pitcher,
watched it shatter. Her mother's flare of anger!Sudden sting of a slap. Her father's pinched lips.

And now this broken morning,
how red the rising sun.
The air so cold, already her heart is freezing.
The wind shrieks
and a pig too, galloping past them,
a hatchet in its side, a savage chasing after it
and a French soldier laughing like the very devil.

Blood on the snow.
Bodies. Mash of footprints everywhere.
A woman's shawl whipping in the wind-
some crippled thing trying to fly.
Flames roaring, consuming their homes.
Thick curdles of smoke.
Its acrid smell mixes with the odor of blood,
cold sweat. Can this be real?

Survivors herded toward the meeting house,
she among them. The men are roped like calves.
Where is her father? There's Joseph, his face all smudged.
Becca clutches her hand, nose running, eyes
like pewter plates.

Raiders strut push shout
in words she doesn't know, hauling away
woolens and kettles, bread and bacon.
And prisoners-a hundred Deerfield villagers,
many of them children, like Joanna.
Reverend Williams, their leading citizen,
moves meekly along, his eyes tearing, lips sputtering.

She tries not to cry, but cinders lodge in her eye.
Crows flap and hop among the slaughtered,
repeating Ack! Ack! Ack!

Joanna pulls her sister along, but turns
to look back, and sees a figure in nightclothes fleeing
toward the woods-her mother
abandoning them, abandoning them.

---

Crossing Green River

The river is not green, but black,
and rushing swiftly, ice clutching its shoreline,
chunks of frozen snow barreling down the waterway,
pine branches covered with white
stretching bony fingers over the water.

And the river is not wide, but treacherous.
Clotted with ice, it rushes, it roils
and they are made to cross it.

Goodwife Williams is not able-she loses
her balance and is swept away downriver,
and when she's dragged ashore, a heavy burden
in her wet clothes, she's choking and spitting,
shuddering and moaning, refusing
to get up, so they tomahawk her, and the reverend
near-faints, but Joanna's own father sets
his mouth to firm and crosses the river,
getting wet to his thighs.
Joanna hangs back.

And the smallest children are not able
so their Indian masters carry them across-
they have masters, they are prisoners now-
while the Deerfield men and oldest boys
splash through the rushing water and some bad words
are shouted out and an owl startles off
into the frigid afternoon woods.
And Joanna hangs back.

Finally, seeing she is not able to make herself
cross over, Martin, her big, strong half-brother, comes back
across for Joanna, and she notices how red his nose is,
and his cheeks, from sunburn or windburn or just the cold,
she doesn't know, and his trousers are torn and damp,
but he holds her arm firmly and helps her plunge through
the freezing channel and climb over sharp rocks that hide
beneath the water and litter the shoreline.

Joanna's feet seem not part of her body
but strange, unfeeling objects, whitish-yellow
pieces of wood, scraped and useless, but the rest of her
stings like a thousand sewing needles and the skirts
tied up upon crossing have been splashed, they are
stiffening with ice and her teeth clack-clack-clack.

She wants to lie down right there, but they are not
allowed to rest, she wants to run into a field of snow,
silent and silvery beneath the sky, and lie down forever
but they are made to jump and slap themselves,
to get the blood moving, her brother says, and on they go
a few miles more till they come to the hidden stash.

It's not visible at first, but they hear dogs whining
and when pine branches are dragged away from the opening
of a shallow cave, they find several crude sleds
and dogs to pull them, animal furs, strips of dried meat and fruit,
and best of all, Indian shoes that lace up to the knees
and are soft, are warm.

And something else unfamiliar to the captives-
those curious paddle-like contraptions the Indians use
where snow is deep: snowshoes.

Three wounded warriors will not have to be carried anymore,
they're helped into the sleds, along with
the youngest children and the heaviest packs.

And they go on.

---

A Coating of Ice

They slept in shelters made of log poles and skins
as freezing rain clink-clinked against the hides.
But today the sun is a bright coin tossed high and far.
All the trees wear an armor of ice. Joanna blinks,
half-blind in all this light. Her thoughts are heavy
and black, though today the whole world shines.
It stretches out before her-

trees and snow, ice glitter. Questions
without answers, an emptiness coated in ice.

She is no place. She is no one. Joanna Kellogg
of Deerfield, brown-haired girl whose home
had a fine red door, whose mother taught her
the things a girl must know, whose father hummed
and worked his fields, brought her outside
to smell the turned soil, measure the height
of their corn-that girl's lost as a dream at dawn.

And her chickens with their warm eggs-
they're a story one tells little children.

She's been given a new name: Ohne-kanos-iaote.
Joseph, who talks to Indians as if he's forgotten
he's a white boy with a civilized tongue-
Joseph says he thinks the name means
White Feather. What kind of fool name is that?

Ohne-kanos-iaote?
No. That girl Joanna? No.
She is a stomach clenching.

They have run out of food.

They See a White Owl

Snow turns to slush. They keep going.
Joseph, who used to run back and forth,
talking, pointing, strutting-he's slowed down.

Rivers to cross, mountains to climb. Keep going.
At dusk a snowy owl glides overhead, a vision,
a ghost, a spirit leading them on. They all pause,

gaze upward. Something shifts inside Joanna.
To be in this wild place with the wind
carrying its pine scent, the moon rising,

all notion of chores erased-it's not entirely bad.
But the meat of two rabbits and a handful of beans
make a thin stew. Children are given their portions first

but never enough. As darkness settles over them,
Becca huddles against her sister, and Joanna feels the jut
of her small shoulder blades, sharp as plough blades.

Joanna and her sister are girls dressed in rags
who must stumble through a wilderness. If they could fly
above it all, wearing white feathers-but no.

A red star throbs on the horizon
and the night feels large around them.