Reservation Road (After Hurricane)

By David Anson Lee

The road bends, broken in places,

mud clinging to tire treads.

Storm debris waits like memory:

scattered corn husks, splintered fences,

a red roof lifted, abandoned.

We walk the shoulder,

feet finding rhythm in fractured earth,

voices murmuring prayers

that drift over the creek

into black cottonwood groves.

The horizon hums resilience.

Wind bends young pines;

children chase kites of torn tarps,

laughing beneath a gray sky.

I trace the river’s scar,

a silver thread beneath the clouds,

and feel the ancestors’ hands

press soft guidance into my back.

This land remembers,

and we rebuild with it,

hands in dirt,

hearts in the storm’s quiet aftermath.

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David Anson Lee is a physician and poet based in Texas, whose work weaves together medicine, philosophy, and Native American heritage. Born on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, he explores identity, memory, mortality, and the human condition through a lens shaped by both clinical practice and philosophical inquiry. His poetry has appeared in journals including Right Hand Pointing, Unbroken Journal, The Scarred Tree, and Braided Way.