Poem: "The Hunters Among Us"
This poem came out of the May 3, 2011 Poetry Fishbowl. It was inspired by a prompt from xjenavivex referring to the Cherokee legend of "The Water Cannibals." It was sponsored by Shirley & Anthony Barrette.
The Hunters Among Us
In the Cherokee land,
there are different water spirits:
the friendly Nûñnë'hï of the streams
and the water cannibals of the deep rivers.
Once there lived a man
in Tïkwäli'tsï town
who became so sick that everyone
thought he would die,
so they left him alone.
Then an old woman came to him
and took him under the waters
where she healed him --
and the man saw how
the water cannibals lived.
When he returned to his people,
he told them how
the spirits went from house to house
just after daybreak, searching
for someone still asleep
to shoot with their invisible arrows.
They took the bodies for their meat
and left behind a shade
that seemed to die and was buried.
The people learned to wake everyone
early in the day and warn them,
"Get up! The hunters are among us!"
So long as they did this,
they were safe.
But there was another, subtler risk
and it took longer for anyone to notice --
the way the water cannibals
would sometimes scratch a person
with their invisible arrowheads,
not enough to kill, just enough
to let their compassion bleed out,
so they would walk away from those
who lay sleeping and let them sleep
or who lay ill and let them die alone.
It was the memory of the old woman
that whispered down through the stories,
saving those who could be saved
and reminding everyone
that it was worth doing.