wheezing, gasping, coughing
spilling onto the street on a morning
grey as campfire smoke — the remnants
of last night or yesterday slung on their lips
in drool or a snarl, shaking like a dog shitting razor blades
for another hit, another fix, a drink, an eye-opener
is how they call it
one by one the assemblage of pain
emerges from the holes and shadows
where they’ve hunkered in or hunkered down
and the street becomes a loose parade
marching back and forth between
a smoke and the feral early-morning dealers
slinging someone else’s product for enough to start the trip
themselves
wheelmen push their carts along behind
the dumpster divers scratching for scraps
you’ll eat anything when you’re starved enough
you can even nudge the rats aside
if there’s enough for both of you
broken women with wild eyes
and skimpy dresses swiped off Army & Navy racks
slink in and ply what remains of their charm and wiles
for a taste, a hit, a drag, a smile even
if it might mean twenty dollars later
when everyone’s looped and stranger things
have happened than a furious hump in the alley
between friends and a good ten rock
passersby have learned to walk the line
that exists two feet away from the edge of curb
where you can’t be grabbed or sprung upon
or where it takes a good determined lurch to reach you
so that there’s an open lane of concrete
between worlds like a land claim where
they’ve learned to stick to their side of the deal
there’s cowboys and Indians, space cadets and hippies
sidewalk commandos and bikers without bikes
and someone’s college sweetheart holding hands
with a rancher’s son who dreams of horses
out beyond the derricks of Alberta grazing
with only the wind for company and the sun
shone down upon it all resplendent
as memories when they vanish in the wash
of this life, the tide of it beyond
all knowing
he dreams of horses
the roll of them beneath his butt and thighs
and the land swept by in the push and punch
of hooves and snorted breath across
the hard pan prairie and how it feels sometimes
to run them hard as far as they can go
before climbing on a fresh one
and kicking it to a gallop that pulls the foothills
closer
“We need fresh horses,” he mumbles to her
but she can only squeeze his hand and squint
into the near distance
on a morning hard as stone
Urban Indian: Portrait 1
he stands at the corner
looking through the tangle
of one braid undone
the nest of it falling
against his cheek
while he toes
the butts at his feet
shrugs and stoops and fingers
one to his lips
like a desultory kiss
then flares the match
and sighs
the day into being
Urban Indian: Portrait 2
she sits in the window
overlooking Pigeon Park
and eases silken fringes
between arthritic fingers
the shawl her grandmother
gave her at the Standing Buffalo powwow
the year before she died
fancy dancing spinning
kicking pretending
the drum could push her
floating across the air
she touched down here
many moons ago
the faded outline
of the Saskatchewan hills
sketched in the wrinkles of her brow
she doesn’t dance now
can barely walk
but staring down at derelicts
hookers, junkies, drunks
and other pavement gypsies
she sings an honour song
so that their ancestors might
watch over and protect them
the same song
her grandmother taught her
to sing in the shawl
snug about her shoulders
Urban Indian: Portrait 3
he stares across a vacant sea
of asphalt and pulls both hands
across his belly slanted
to his hip
and recalls the great canoe
they paddled out of Kitimat
then down Hecate Strait
and into Queen Charlotte Sound
the summer he was twelve
and he can still feel the muscle
of the channel on his arm
the smell of it
potent, rich, eternal
the smell of dreams and visions
thunderbirds dancing
orca chasing raven
across the slick surface
of the sea
he crosses to his closet
and retrieves the tools and wood
and paints he stores there
bundles it in the button blanket
he danced in once
and heads down the stairs
out into the street
to find the kids
he teaches to carve paddles now
the ocean
phosphorescent
in the moonlight
what he brings to them
Grandfather Talking 2 — Teachings
me I never thought that bein’ Injun
was any diff’rent than someone else
we see the same sky, breathe
the same air, feel the same
earth under our feet
and everyone smiles with the sun on their back
an’ the cool wind on their face
us we never knew no better
than what our teachin’s told us
and what they say is that us people
swim out into the world the same
born innocent us, all of us
needin’ help and shelter and warm
skin against our own to tell us
that this world outside our mother’s belly
beats with one heartbeat
like the drum of her heart
we heard in darkness
that’s what teachin’s are meant to do, my boy
lead us back to that one heartbeat
me I remember once long time ago
when I was small maybe nine, maybe ten
when we still lived the trap line life
thirty miles out near One Man Lake
where the manomin grew thick as the bush
in the coves an’ bays near our tents
and I could hear it rustle in the wind at night
in my blankets on a bed of cedar boughs
me I went to sleep all summer hearin’ that voice
like a whisper in my ear all night long
the promise of the rice
filling up my dreams
anyhow my grandmother says to me one day
it’s time for me to be a man an’ me
I thought I was gonna get to hunt
get my first bear, first moose, first deer
but she took me walkin’ through the bush
an’ made me gather sticks and dry wood
to carry back to camp
an’ said that I was gonna be the fire-keeper now
oh, me, my boy, I wanted to hunt so bad
and makin’ fire didn’t seem no warrior kind of thing
to me an’ I made a big sad face at her
well her she sat me down beside her
and never said nothing for the longest time
until she raised a hand and pointed around our camp
“see the Old Ones,” she said to me
“see how they sit close to that fire to warm their bones?
see how they like that lots?”
me I seen that and it made me smile
“see them young ones,” she said
“see how they run to that fire for their soup
see how happy in the belly they are?”
I seen that too me
“tonight,” the old lady said
“the storyteller will sit at that fire and us
we’ll sit there too and hear the voice of magic in the night,
that fire throwin’ sparks like spirits
flyin’ in the air all around us all
and us we’ll feel happy in that togetherness
like we done for generations now here
on the shore of this lake with the sound
of the wind in the trees like the sound
of the Old Ones whisperin’ our names.”
me I seen that too an’ I looked at her
and my face wasn’t so big and sad no more
“you bring the fire here,” she said
“you light the flame where we gather
an’ you cause all that to be, my boy
you take care of us that way
keep us warm, keep us fed, keep us happy
every stick you gather is a part of that
a part of learnin’ how to care for us
and when you learn how to do that good
your grandfather will come
and show you how to hunt.”
me I never forgot that
and I learned to be a fire-keeper
before I learned to hunt and trap and net
that’s how the teachin’s work, my boy
learn them slow and they become you
and you in turn become them too
more Anishinabeg, more Injun, more human being
and by the time you turn around on that path
to look back on where you come that’s when you get to see
that you learned the biggest thing first
to care for people
to light a fire in the night
for them to follow home
and us we’re all the same us people
guess we’re all Injun that way us humans
we tend to that one heartbeat that joins us up
like we tend a fire to keep our people warm
and fed and happy
the teachin’s are the same for all of us
one heartbeat, one fire
callin’ us home, see
Born Again Indian
each morning he lights the sacred medicines
in the abalone bowl and walks
every inch of his home with blessings
and prayers for peace and prosperity
health and well-being and with gratitude
for everything that already is
he eases the sacred smoke over everything
the drum, the rattle, the rocks
and everything he’s collected
that reminds him of the relationship
he has with Earth — Aki in his talk
and thanks her for her blessings
standing at the window that overlooks
the lake nestled in the cut of mountains
he feels the sky holding it all in place
and the land singing in its grasp
so that when he closes his eyes he feels
the notes trill within him
now and then he goes to the sweat lodge
to sing and meditate and pray and maybe
cry for things that continue to hurt
and to feel the waves of that ancient heat
purify, rejuvenate and elevate him
to a state where he can carry on
he doesn’t dance, doesn’t carry a pipe
or wear his hair in braids or a pony tail
or adorn his truck or hats or home
with displays of eagle feathers, buffalo skulls
or the ceremonial trappings that have come
to mean native pride these days
instead there’s prayer ties in the corners of the
four directions of his home and a pair of blankets
elders wrapped his wife and him within one time
when they brought stories back to the people
that visitors wrap about themselves and feel
the sacred nature of that gift
he’s got an Indian name and he carries teachings
that elders gifted him with on his travels
and he passes those teachings on in the work he does
because they told him that this is how you honour
the gifts that come to you and make you
bigger inside, stronger somehow and proud
oblivious to fashion and any need to present
an image of himself with books or art or relics
because he’s learned to carry ancient paintings
splashed on the caverns of his being
and be content in the knowledge that they’re there
and all of that’s funny because in the beginning
when he finally made it home
and surrounded himself with Indian things
and learned to talk his talk and walk
a ceremonial road and dance and sing and pray
his own people laughed and called him a Born Again
those voices hurt and cut him deep with shame
and a sense of guilt that he hadn’t learned
anything about himself while he was growing up
even though they knew he’d been swept away
and made to live alone with his skin
in a world that was not his own
so when he made it back against all odds
he wanted this living connection to who he was
so desperately that he celebrated openly
letting the joy he felt flow outward
in the dances, songs and ceremonies and the hair
he grew out and braided to honour all he’d learned
but they laughed and called him Born Again
because he fumbled with the pipe and struggled
to pronounce his name and pray in his Ojibway talk
apple, they said sometimes, with the white inside
and the red skin on the outside tacked on
almost like an afterthought
it took a long, long time to get over that
and it was only the elders that came to guide him
that showed him that what it really meant
to be an Indian these days was to present yourself
openly and earnestly to the spiritual way
and be “borne again” to the heart of it
so he stands content and watches the sun break
over the crest of the mountains across the lake
offers a pinch of tobacco to the spirit of Creation
asaama nee-bah gid-eenah, he says in prayer
I offer tobacco today — then he looks up at his home
and walks inside to find himself again
Geographies
If time and life were to take my eyes I could navigate our
home’s geography by feel. Braille it. Read it with the tips
of my fingers and the wide flush pasture of my palms and
never knock a knee or jar a toe against any of the small juts
and peninsulas of our living. Lord knows I’ve practised it
enough. Moonless nights when sleep laid claim to you
I’ve crept across the creaking boards to sit at the window
overlooking the mercury platter of the lake as coyotes yip
on the ridge behind us and the sudden streak of an owl
flays back the skin of night above our yard. Or the noise
of something moving beyond the walls has called me from
our bed and I’ve stalked it window to window, skulking like a
thief and felt this space tattoo itself to my skin. I can walk the
length and breadth of this place in darkness and never feel
the lack of light. Geographies become us when we inhabit
them enough. And so I enter every room skin first, the wash
of the smell of our being here borne on currents of air like
motes of dust, settling everywhere at once, leading me back to
you again with every sure and practised placing of the foot.
Pacific Rim
for Debra on her forty-eighth birthday
indiscernible
this line formed by the great
overturned bowl of the sky
horizon suggested
as the eagle’s cry
suggests sound
there’s a basso profundo to the crash of surf on rocks
rumbles of strange mariner tales or whale story
carried by current and retold by tide
elegant
passionate as the embrace of starfish to rock
or eerie and enchanted as the anemone’s grasp
a siren’s call living in gentle, waving cilia
tidal hair
the mermaid’s dance in water filled
with singing
there’s nothing here to suggest the life
or lives we left behind us
only sound and air and histories spoken
in the sudden spray of heron from a tree
or this rock cupped in your hand
shellfish left behind a symbol for us
not of emptiness or departures or even loss
but of being
it’s what we leave behind for those that follow
that counts in the end