Notches In The Sky
Fox Gulch, Tonto N.F.
Beneath the peaks where shadows deeply lie,
Young Hoomothya walked his native land.
"Wee-ka-ja-hor," four notches in the sky,
Hewn sharply by a giant axe's hand.
In eighteen seventy-two, a shadow fell,
On Skeleton Cave, where soldiers came to slay.
A sudden storm of rifle fire and hell,
Took kin and over seventy souls away.
A captain claimed the orphaned boy of eight,
Renamed him Michael Burns, a world estranged.
He scouted for the troops who sealed his fate,
His people gone, his whole existence changed.
Though dressed in blue, he never would forget
The axe-cut peaks where sun and sorrow met.