By the Tohonto O'odham Barbed Wire

After a drunk he lies on the highway
That runs the reservation like a river
But the mountain still
Speaks louder than the whiskey
And his grip on the Earth's salvation
Won't release.

What else can he do?
He has no number on his home (he knows where he lives),
He does not own anything that will still be there when he's gone,
He is not a man to market water, air, or time.
And just pissing on the ground here is a federal crime.

They knew not what they done
When their religion of possession crossed the land;
They did not know the land had its own ideas,
Or that the birds had seen it all before,
Or how ancestors warned each day it would be coming:
The washing machines shot with bullet holes on sacred lands,
That salamanders crawling along
The tires and broken glass that do not know their place…

Their Gods were never killed,
Just their will to survive.
Is that why he drinks like a rich old lady?