The Hills Remember My Name

The hills do not forget

the weight of our footsteps.

They breathe where drums once slept,

beneath grass sharp as winter teeth.

I was taught the dead

stand just behind the visible:

not ghosts, but listeners,

their mouths full of smoke and prayer.

At dawn, the elders said,

the spirits test your shadow.

If it will not answer the sun,

you are already halfway gone.

I saw a woman rise from red dust,

her braids threaded with lightning.

She carried a bowl of water

that reflected no sky.

“This land remembers you,” she said,

“even when you deny it.”

Her voice broke like river ice

deciding where to fail.

That night, coyotes sang

the names buried in boarding schools.

The stars leaned closer,

hungry for confession.

I pressed my ear to the ground.

The earth was chanting:

not for mercy,

but for endurance.

Some prayers are not answered.

They are inherited.

---

David Anson Lee is a physician, philosopher, and poet whose work explores spirituality, myth, medicine, and the liminal spaces between belief and embodiment. Born on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, his writing often draws on Indigenous traditions, Eastern philosophy, and contemporary metaphysical questions. His poems have appeared in Ink Sweat & Tears, Silver Birch Press, Eunoia Review, Braided Way, Right Hand Pointing, The Orchards, Unbroken Journal, and elsewhere. He lives in Texas, where he continues to write at the intersection of science, ritual, and the unseen.