Shotgun Shack

By John I. Blair

When he was a boy
My father lived
In a shotgun shack
Along Burned Creek
Outside Washunga, Oklahoma.

If you’d fire a gun
From his front door
The bullet would pass
Through every room
In the six-room house.

Burned Creek got that name
When the oil on its water,
Drifting from the Shidler fields,
Caught fire one night
And burned all the trees.

Washunga’s name
Was from Chief Washunga
Of the Kaw Nation, exiled here
From their homes in Kansas
To a place where they could die.

The limestone tribal council house,
Trading post and six-room school,
Built by the U.S. government,
Mouldered, abandoned,
In the brush beside the road.

The details don’t really matter much;
Burned Creek, the shotgun shack,
And the entire town went under water
When the reservoir filled,
Except for the graveyard on the hill.

©2004 John I. Blair