By the flickering flame sits the Seminole Indian
With the sad of face but the strong of heart
As the crocodile's scales and the pelican's pinions
In the gloom and the glow of the smoke depart.
As the Bayous glow and the glades go gleaming
beneath heaven's heat and its raging song
while withering winds set them rolling
All day long.


Now the treetops sway with his sorrowful singing
with soulful cries die the cringing leaves.
And tree trunks whimper beneath the purging
And the flowers can no longer the flames deceive.
And the green grown grass that sung in the sunlight
Is it not now knowing what the sun then meant
When its glimmer galore once promised the moonlight
heaven sent?

So he sings in the heat with his smoldering arrows
Which he twangs to the tune of the sycamore's fright.
And the crocodile flees with his scaly brow furrowed
And the frogs once free don't croak in the night
And the black bear turns toward a better horizon
Where the whimpering willow doesn't wail in the glade
Where the blaze blows not with a sickening ardor
In the shade.

Where the moccasin, queen of the creeping and crawling,
Doesn't flee while frightened at the flames that fly
Whipping the waves where she once lay soaking
The red and the white of her reptile eyes.
Where the hummingbird kisses the blossoming flowers
With their petals primed for his piercing beak
And the everglades do not glow nor glower
week on week.

With the last feeble breathe of his smoldering body
The Seminole sings of a sorrow once wrought.
Soul of the plains and buffaloes plodding
Was their plodding the centuries not for naught?
And the trickle of blood that caressess his temples
Is it not the tears of a buffaloes heart?
Is it not the sorrow of a grieving grassland
ripped apart?

Now the pumas growl and the whippoorwills whimper
At the seething sky turned bright coal red
Was death by predator not much simpler?
By the python's hiss or the viper's breathe?
And the trees say naught for they say naught always
While the Seminole sits in their silence entombed
As the everglades burn and its waters keep boiling
Beneath the moon.