Canoe Race

Pine

Pine

Long ago on starry nights now far away
after journeys out in shining sun
I slept where elders lay.

I listened, dozing, to word and song
until sleep took me into dawn.
I awoke one day to years gone from me
passed into aunts grown elderly.

I asked them my questions, which I know now
would matter deeply to me somehow.
But youth takes time to fall away
to the bigger questions that mark our way.
I let time go and now there’s left
No one to guide me in my quest
for old traditions and all that was done
on those dream-filled nights before the coming sun.

I was new – they were the old
And so their stories stop here, only partly told:
The baskets they made, the secrets they kept.
All that telling while this child slept.

I grew my own child, I kept a home.
I tended my fires for things unknown.
It took me so long to look behind
To want to learn more of my family line
Having lost big pieces of where I came from
I believed, as we all do, that time would go on.
Yet all have died now – almost all gone
Except an aunt and uncle – all long gone.

But they were the Mi’kmaqs, my family,
Who came to this land by the sea
To sell their baskets, to pick your crops
And this was where their tribal ways stop
With me, and my sister, there’s no one else speaks here, or can
About the Mi’kmaqs who came to stay
Here, by the sea, and still lived their way.
I know what then I learned
And for this I believe I have earned
The right to say my name is Pine.
My mother gave it to me before she passed – it’s mine.

Summer Pallette

Summer Pallette

Four days ago Earth gave me frozen ground beneath my feet
in crusted old winter white
and for just a mile ride in the car, frozen fingers, too,
and pinched toes and I had to pull my fingers up into the palms of my gloves.
Three days ago I woke up to Earth floating in a fog, covered in a grey cloud.
In a universe apart, dull and alone, rain misted,
then heavier it fell and soon it was two days ago.
The rain washed and washed and scrubbed until the face of old winter was white and glazed,
slippery clean and down to layers frozen there when winter began.
Yesterday I awoke to a day already begun.
Running, tumbling clouds crossed the sky taking turns with the sun in my eyes.
Winds blew so fierce I feared for the trees
and could almost see roads towel-dried.
Where snow banks the day before had receded, grass appeared roadside in tufts here, inches there, sprung up like the fur on the tail of a cat who has finished with her bathing, and I stayed in.
Then today, after she had roused and shaken herself awake,
Earth sat back, majestically, to study herself and prepare a summer palette
in silent pastel sun, slightest breeze, bits of moisture, dots of clouds.
Tomorrow, I surmise from dreams of summers gone
When sun-baked tar beneath my feet sent me tippy-toed,
the cool green grass will offer up its refuge
And nights indoors will feel like out, and outside feel like in.

The Ancestors

The Ancestors

The hosts are hovering
Above my mother’s
Grim and gaping grave
From above her grim and gaping grave
They can hear her smothering
Her footsteps lessoning
And they wave
They don’t say where she’ll be going
Don’t tell us from where they came
The hosts just keep hovering
Above my mother’s grave
Their voices whisper high and calling
Along trails that split the trees
She’s more than ready for this journey
For the grave she dug so deeply
She’ll go gasping, now relenting
To that place she’d always seen
In visions, strong and holy
Of the one she called Mary
In the light at trail’s end
To where she’ll meet the ancestors again

Childhood

Childhood

I saw the fireflies in the night,
recall sleeping on the ground near elders and cousins,
knew the fullness of our supper washed in water near the shelter,
gathered with them at the fire to hear the stories of the elders,
heard their laughter.

There were presents for the stranger when we gathered all together.
Needles spilled from pines between the houses that she built us.
Daughters cowed to mothers
Who cowed to elders, never others.
Knolls stood out in glory in amber autumn bluster.
Spirits shaped in hollows in the heaviness of twilight.
Deer and rabbit slept outside the ring of firelight.

There was god out on the landscape poised and full with knowing.
God was there at night in secret rites of elders
I flew with breezes stirred in trees that towered,
was intent on signs of lodgers in the fallen pines rotting,
believed that I was whole with every change approaching.

Now I’m not certain, I’m not so sure
I don’t see them anymore.
Now I know I didn’t know,
And I’m not well.
Time and death have left me in darkness.
I can’t reclaim it, I’m confounded
And surrounded by these ghosts.

To My Elders

To My Elders

Please be there when I go.
I want you there in rows and rows.
I want you gathered in a place
Like together on the face
Of this land you all once were.

I remember that so well.
You were all gathered like a clan,
A tribe, a people set aside
From town and country.

Now there you should be collecting
As if you were fireflies in the night
Sent to render me sight.
I want you all on the wing,
And then I want to hear you sing.
Sing, you all. Tell the truth!
I’m deceived by my memories of you.

I’ve lost what you left to me.
You be there! You be there all
So that I can ask you
As I move on,
Stripping away my relations,
Shedding skin of land I love,
Of life lived in stations.
Take me to you, show me my home.
Give back my integrity.
Validate my existence
With reasons I can believe in.

Come to me restless to give me sight.
Come regretful. Say I was right.
Tell me what mattered. Disclose what was real.

Wait for me in file.
I’ll be just a while,
Then I should know – I, myself, should know,
Only be there when I go.

The Ghost of Mary Rose

The ghost of Mary Rose
Haunts the balding hill
The old and balding hill
Where lately her house came down

The trees were tall and full
She knew them all so well
And loved them all so well
Out here, far from town

The love of Mary Rose
was home up on the hill
‘cross stream and up the hill
Al built her house up there

Al Labrador would walk
The road back into town
He much preferred the town
The people and the lights

He’d sit out by the road
As strangers took the bus
He’d sometimes take that bus
Down on the road to town

And Mary loved the trees
Old Al could walk the leaves
The trees shed, drying leaves
And you’d never hear a sound

The ghost of Mary Rose
Makes a high and keening sound
Keens a high, lamenting sound
Among those fallen leaves.

Now, the ghost of Mary goes
As her children fell the trees
All the ancient living trees
On the old and balding hill.

Death of Our Elders

The Death of our Elders

I sit to talk of wind and fear,
death swelling in black clouds that hid the moonlight.
Old men sitting silently, bringing the firewood,
Stoking the fire and smoking their pipes
While aunts made way for the journey.

No strangers appeared then – no stories, no teaching,
Low whispers over firelight near the lamp light.
Outside where the young ones waited
Confusion formed on winds rising.

Go east, we heard them saying –
Old aunts weighted down with their praying
Sent the young ones through the darkness
Too near hollows filled with spirits
Who would not tell the young ones stories,
Only scar them with their nearness
On the dark, the endless journey
Through the forest with their news.

Sadel’s ghost blew up behind them
Touching heels and teasing shoulders
Breath so old they felt its passing
Could not dream of what she said.

It is wolf, old aunts cautioned
When they ran for home, afraid
In the wind that beats behind you
Your own fears that have found you
Hungry devils of your making.

Now we sisters keep the vigil
Call the old ones to be ready
Light the lamp and stoke the fire
Watching death, it comes completely
And then the bowl of sacred water
Meant to wash her, now to send her
Go east, we tell her, go to the east.

Prisoner

We lucked out, the prisoner and I
It was a weighted world, and we just got by
In the wood men fed children with diseases
On the road the mad aunts gathered
They’ve left their poison in the road dust
And I manage rest on fences driven into earth

Last night I took myself back on the weathered stretches
Slowly lost my footing, when I saw your prisoner shackles
I fell across your ankles, heard the smothered sound of moaning
It was you, who I'd forgotten
You, who’ve been forsaken

Last night I bathed myself in road dust
Faced the elders who in that dust were whirling
And I think I might go crazy if they won’t let me sleep
Their eyes flash on fogs that blind me
They lay in hollows, judging
They sweep the air, dancing, just above my head

I thought we’d got away, I and my captive
Spreading out on the land to take it back, like a lover
But in unnamed ways they’ve bound the prisoner
And fouled what I knew of earth and brush and song
And I can’t go to sleep now the witnesses are gone

On the Eve of the Death of the Land

On the eve of the death of the land
I said to those who came before me
Long, so long ago had grown here
Laid in waiting, then laid in passing
Said I to them “So glad I knew you
Glad to have these stories of you
Sad to now say goodbye to you
When now from this land you leave us

This land is dying, now you’ve left here
Waiting out eternal glory
You have gone thus, and now, I must
For I was but your Indian orphan

Parents gone, ancestors quiet
Devils pouncing on footpaths chasing
Goodbye to all you old ghosts and Gigus
Leaning into paths out to the gathering
Lighting old fires in long gone fire pits
I’m so glad to say I knew you
I knew the day would come when mother
Dressed in braids and going eastward
Leaving land and life she lived here
Would take the whole lot of you with her
Her going meant it all went with her
Now just three sisters left to remember
And a brother, the oldest, our brother.

Gigu (Grandmother)

Gigu

After the leaves, cooked in the sun, fall in the backwoods
And all things past are eaten by the soil
I walk beaten trails lined with skeletons
Stark against the sky.
Others sleep here still, not I.

I remember the warmth inside
Gigu and her daughters ate here, and slept
Old Gigu moved the fire with her hands
And read the leaves when the tea was gone.

Emlsigtmat (her ghost) has taken the cabin walls for firewood.
Her hands move the fire, still, for me
Lighting my path through winter trees.