Sonnet with Bird

1. Seventeen months after I moved off the reservation, I traveled to London to promote my first internationally published book. 2. A Native American in England! I imagined the last Indian in England was Maria Tall Chief, the Osage ballerina who was once married to Balanchine. An Indian married to Balanchine! 3. My publishers put me in a quaint little hotel near the Tate Gallery. I didn’t go into the Tate. Back then, I was afraid of paintings of and by white men. I think I’m still afraid of paintings of and by white men. 4. This was long before I had a cell phone, so I stopped at payphones to call my wife. I miss the intensity of a conversation measured by a dwindling stack of quarters. 5. No quarters in England, though, and I don’t remember what the equivalent British coin was called. 6. As with every other country I’ve visited, nobody thought I was Indian. This made me lonely.7. Lonely enough to cry in my hotel bed one night as I kept thinking, “I am the only Indian in this country right now. I’m the only Indian within a five-thousand-mile circle.” 8. But I wasn’t the only Indian; I wasn’t even the only Spokane Indian.9. On the payphone, my mother told me that a childhood friend from the reservation was working at a London pub. So I wrote down the address and took a taxi driven by one of those London cabdrivers with extrasensory memory.10. When I entered the pub, I sat in a corner, and waited for my friend to discover me. When he saw me, he leapt over the bar and hugged me. “I thought I was the only Indian in England,” he said.11. His name was Aaron and he died of cancer last spring. I’d rushed to see him in his last moments, but he passed before I could reach him. Only minutes gone, his skin was still warm. I held his hand, kissed his forehead, and said, “England.” 12. “England,” in our tribal language, now means, “Aren’t we a miracle?” and “Goodbye.” 13. In my strange little hotel near the Tate, I had to wear my suit coat to eat breakfast in the lobby restaurant. Every morning, I ordered eggs and toast. Everywhere in the world, bread is bread, but my eggs were impossibly small. “What bird is this?” I asked the waiter. “That would be quail,” he said. On the first morning, I could not eat the quail eggs. On the second morning, I only took a taste. On the third day, I ate two and ordered two more. 14. A gathering of quail is called a bevy. A gathering of Indians is called a tribe. When quails speak, they call it a song. When Indians sing, the air is heavy with grief. When quails grieve, they lie down next to their dead. When Indians die, the quails speak. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit shermanalexie.substack.com/subscribe