that’s crustacean wisdom
the mother of pearl shimmer of truth
that lives on our shelves now
alongside the rocks and wood and nets
and floats and curios
adrift to adorn our world
I don’t know what it is about this place
that makes such perfect sense
only that geographies sometimes
need our hearts to fill them
as though this delicate joining of spirit to sky
were the underpinning of everything
you fit here
you fill space
as easily as this ragged seam
of coastline fills the eye
rendering distance and forgetting
to timelessness as simple, as pure and perfect
as the line a seagull makes
sailing across the sky
when I think of this continent’s edge now
this surrendering to ocean
I will think of myself as coastline
eased, affirmed and recreated
by virtue of you washing over me
the surf of you
filled with stories and bearing news
of other worlds beyond my own
adding to me
this beach of my being
you adorn with treasures
Dreamwoman
For the longest time I believed
that Dreamwoman would be the one
who cared that the starting infield
for the 1965 Boston Red Sox
was Thomas, Mantilla, Petrocelli and Malzone
or that Bob Mosley was
the bass player for Moby Grape
or that the banjo harkened back
to a gourd strung with strings
from Africa’s Gambra River
or that the word carousel comes
from the French word carrousel
meaning a playful tournament of knights
or that the thirteen central poles
on a tipi each stand for a specific principle
to guide the lives of those who
lived there
I thought Dreamwoman
would care deeply
about all of that
and take it as important
but it turns out instead
that she simply cares
that I do
Elder 2
to the memory of Jack Kakakaway
sometimes he’d just walk away
from the car and head out
across Kananaskis through the trees
and up the slope of a mountain
or along the ragged seam of a creek
where whitefish finned in pools
and the smell of cedar wafted
over everything and I would
follow waiting
for the words to fall
he’d stop now and then
and just look at things
or reach out a hand
to touch moss or stone
and nod and offer up
a half smile or close
his eyes and lift his face
to the frail breeze
and breathe
he put his hand in a bear print once
and knelt there praying
silently
and when he laid tobacco down
beside a mountain spring
I did it too
wordlessly
and he smiled
and I remember how after
one long afternoon of quiet
rambling through the hills
he stood beside the car
and looked back across the land
raised his hands and bowed
his head then looked up
square at me and asked
“did you hear all that?”
and the funny thing is
Grandfather Talking 3 — On Time Passing
Fifty years ago now there wasn’t nothing like this nowhere.
Me I’m lying in a bed in a room in a brick building they call a
retirement home but me I never had nothin’ to retire from.
The bush an’ the river an’ the land don’t ask the Anishinabeg
to punch no time card and there was never no boss man
there when I done things to put no cash in my hand. So me
I figger retirement means to be put away somewhere like
they put me here on accounta my hands don’t work so good
no more with the arthritis and me I know I couldn’t walk
the bush now even if I wanted to — and I do, my boy. I do.
But they bring me a beer every now and then I keep under
my mattress so the nurse can’t see, drink it long and slow,
hold it in my mouth and taste it good. Ever good them beer
sometimes. Make me remember. Like that time me and old
Stan Jack standin’ on the dock at the Gun Lake Lodge watchin’
that sun go down, both of us noddin’ and not speakin’ on
accounta us we see things like that us Ojibway and there’s no
words big enough to say. We drunk beer slow there him and
me. One each. Just happy watchin’ the land and feelin’ all
easy with each other like you come to when you know a man
long time. Him he’s gone now old Stan but us we used to
walk together outta Whitedog into the bush an’ out onto the
land to places where they never had no names for them on
accounta us we never needed no names. You hold a place in
your memory for what it gives to you. Call it somethin’ you
change it and us we never wanted to change nothing out
there. Us we knew our way around by feel like. Where the
wind comes through a gap, how rapids sound, how the voice
of them is diff’rent comin’ from the east than from the west,
the cool you feel on your face steppin’ into the shadow a
ridge throws all on you. Yes, that land it’s a feeling, my boy.
Or least it was one time. But them they come and put in
roads. Pretty soon there’s houses. Big cut lines through the
trees. There’s diff’rent kind of memories for the people then.
For me too. Gotta remember which road takes you to which
lake ’steada followin’ the trees. Me I went from that dock in
the sunset to the truck the old man got and drivin’ to Kenora
that one time in ’59 and seein’ a girl looking for a ride to
town an’ pullin’ over and her climbing up into the cab of that
old truck and grinnin’ at me with a face like sunshine an’ us
talkin’ like old friends and when we made the curve at Minaki
how she touched my leg an’ we both smiled, me showin’
more gum than Safeway. Stayed in town four days that time.
First time I ever forgot the bush me. First time I ever knew I
could. Funny huh, how fast something like a truck and a girl
an’ town can change you? Change everything?
For Generations Lost
Against the sky the trees poke crooked fingers
upwards in praise
and even the rocks lie lodged like hymns
on the breast of Earth
way hi ya hey way hi
I sing for you
even though my language feels foreign on my tongue
and the idea of myself
scraped raw and aching from years of absence
has only now begun to form itself into a shape I recognize
I watch you wander across the skin of this planet
bearing wounds that seep poison into your blood
your faces drawn into masks like the spirit dancers wear
to chase away the night
way hi ya hey way hi
when I returned to you I never thought of this
a people like me who had to fight
to reclaim themselves
but I’ve come to like this even more
love you for the pain you bear like saints
the history of your displacement
tattooed upon your faces
in lines and wrinkles etched like songs
in a lower register
sung from the gut
and yet you dance
you walk the Red Road of the spirit
and become more of who you were created to be
despite the incursions and the invasions
of your minds and bodies and souls
it’s a struggle perhaps
but I’ve watched you reclaim yourselves
one ravaged piece at a time, mend and succeed
despite all odds to remain warriors
who dance the sun across the sky
and sing the rain down upon the land
way hi ya hey way hi
there is so much strength in you
and I want to tell you that if you break
do it moving forward not away
risk everything
for the real victory is the journey itself
and the only thing we take away or leave behind
is the story of that trek
to be told and retold forever
on the tongues of those we love
you taught me that
in your lodges and your teachings you showed me
that the world remains a wild place
and our only choice is harmony
way hi ya hey way hi
I can’t replace the years they took away from you
salve the bruises and the scars they left upon your skin
heal the seeping wounds you carry after all these years
or return the disappeared ones to your arms
I can’t erase that past
but I can learn to dance and I can learn to sing
in the language that has always been my own
I can celebrate in the ceremony and the ritual
they could never take away
become in my own way
the expression of you
before the darkness fell
and after the light returned
as it does now
where warriors dance the sun across the sky
and sing the rain down upon the land
way hi ya hey way hi
Ojibway Graveyard
Beyond here is the residential school where
hundreds of our kids were sent sprawling
face first against the hard-packed ground
of a religion and an ethic that said “surrender”
and when they couldn’t or wouldn’t
they wound up here just beyond the gaze
of the building that condemned them to
this untended stretch of earth
everywhere
the unmarked graves of a people
whose very idea of god sprang from
the ground in which they’re laid
there is no fence here no hedgerow
to proclaim this as a sanctuary or even
as a resting place only bitter twirls
of barbed wire canted wildly on posts
rotted and broken and snapped by neglect
unlike the marble and granite headstones
that proclaim the resting places of nuns
and priests devoted to the earthly toil
of saving lost and ravaged souls
for a god and a book that says
to suffer the children to come
unto the light that never really
shone for them
ever
even the wind is lonely here
clouds skim low and the chill
becomes a living thing that invades
the mind and there is nothing
not even prayer in any human tongue
that can lift the pall of dispiritedness
created here for them to sleep in
a brother’s grave somewhere in the rough
and tangle of the grasses can’t be seen
only felt like a cold spot between the ribs
and a caught breath sharp with tears
bitterness
what they slipped onto the tongues
of generations removed from us
like a wafer
soaked in vinegar
they say we Indians never say goodbye
but I doubt that’s true
no people in their right minds or hearts
would cling to these sad effigies
the knowledge that someone once thought
that they were less than human
deserving nothing in the end
but an unmarked plot of earth
beneath a sullen sky the weeds and grasses
stoked by wind to sing their only benediction
we bid goodbye
to nuns and priests
and schools
that only ever taught us pain
keep your blessing for yourselves
in the end you’re the ones
who need them
Ojibway Dream
There’s nothing like a can of Spam mixed
with eggs, canned potatoes and a mug of
campfire coffee with the grounds still in
cooked over an open flame
and even if there was it wouldn’t measure
up to the crucial test of how it tastes
on bannock made on a stick
that’s just the plain truth of things
well, a pickerel packed in clay and tossed
into the fire comes awful close
as long as there’s greens and wild mushrooms
tossed over flame and then blueberries
all washed down with Ojibway tea
then a smoke to share
with the Spirits might
just come close
but then again a nice moose rubaboo
properly done with flour, water and maple
syrup with bannock for dipping is hard
to resist at the best of times provided
there’s a cob of corn roasted on the fire
with the husk still on and water from
the river cold and rich with the mineral taste
that reminds you of rocks and lakes upstream
and time and the fact that the way
to an Ojibway man’s heart
isn’t through his stomach
but through his recollections
while seated on a cheap red stool
in a plastic diner looking out
over a freeway choked with cars
and people hungering
for something better tasting
than success
Copper Thunderbird
in memory of Norval Morrisseau
Diogenes you said went walking
with a lamp in the broadest daylight
in a search for one good man
as though that would explain how
they came to find you lurking
in the bushes beyond Hastings & Main drunk
that early summer of ’87
raving and talking in ebullient colours
as though the air were a canvas
and legends are born on the dire breath
of rot-gut sherry and the twisting snake
of dreams bred in the bruise of hangover mornings
where Diogenes wakes to crawl
on hands and knees into the light himself
you chuckled then
said they’d never get you
and the truth is they never did
in the belly of legends lives
the truth of us
where shape-shifters walk and flying skeletons
cruise the long nights of our souls
and the tricksters inhabit the dark
where the light of the lamp
you shone there bleeds fantastic colour
into the crevices we’ve learned
to be afraid to look into for fear
we’d see ourselves peering outward
and know we needed you or your like
to paint us home
you talked to me of birch bark scrolls
and your grandfather’s cabin in the trees
where the map of our being laid out in pictographs
was translated in the talk you said
was the original talk of our people
that’s rarely spoken anymore
then chuckled again and held me fast
with obsidian eyes that gleamed
with teachings and spoke softly of the stories
that came to fill the canvas of you
resplendent in the harmony and sheen
of colours you said were meant to heal
mystic tones and the hue of shaman songs
the river of black becoming the contrast
that teaches us everything about ourselves
if we’re willing to bob in its current
so you set them there in the weft and weave
of canvases despite those Ojibway who claimed
that you gave too much away
even though they could only ever guess
at what you meant to say
because they’d closed their ears and hearts
and minds to stories alive
in the belly of legends
you said to me then
“they’ll never get me”
and the truth is they never did
all through that long day ensconced
in the feigned rusticity of the Jasper Lodge
you made me tea and told me
the migration story of my people falling
into the old talk every now and then
but I never minded because it was authentic
and the dip and roll of Ojibway became
another way to enter it together
keep it
close to me like the migis shell
you pressed into my palm
when I made it to the ocean eventually