Shaping Life
To show a direction
she points her chin
toward where you should go
To show you a person
she points her chin
toward the person in question
To point your finger
is rude and disrespectful
it is what colonists do
He doesn’t like to stand in line
it’s not about waiting his turn
but a nightmare memory of childhood
He remembers residential school
square rooms and slicing whips
and how they cut your hair across
He follows the elders
dancing into the arbour
an honour not a line
We embroider and bead
traditional curving caressing designs
nature has no straight lines
We dance in a circle
weaving a basket of love
our lives are not lines
In our traditions
there are only three lines
and two points
A sacred pipe is straight
an arrow and a spear as well
only the weapons have points
Peskewikús
I knew it was the Peskewikús moon
when the grass began to grow
deep dark feathers
standing up and reaching for the sky
Four families visit from the fields
father and mother geese let go their old feathers
gifting the grass with memories of flight
while their children grow first new ones for flying
The young ones stretch wings
itchy with new feathers
catching warm breezes
yearning to take flight under the waxing moon
At full time the clouds are layered celestial tides
against a darkness backlit with moonlight
I look up into an ocean
shifting and islanding across the sky
The geese disappear into the waning moontime
young ones inherit the secrets
how to fly ahead of winter storms
joining wingtips in flights of arrows
Casting their flying shadows on the night
they will find their way back to spring
laying eggs nested with melodies
of Frog Croaking Moon
The Mi’kmaq call the July moon Peskewikús, or Birds Shed Feathers.
Cockeyed
Like everything else
about the seasons
winter hesitates
then January thaw
sneaks in before
the turn of the year
disappearing before
February’s blizzards
which arrive halfway through
January
Lá Bealtaine
The time of fire
The time of gold
When aos sí work their magic
In sunlit fields
Wearing new green
Gather the coltsfoot blooms
Floating them on spring water
A flower remedy
To heal the spirit
Of winter’s slumber
Harvest gold dandelions
For summer wine
While the early bees
Find their way
Making mead honey
May moon waxes
Gilding the twilight
Fairy frogs weave the night
Singing their spells
Between the stars
The bonfires blaze
Libations poured
For kin, kine, and crops
Light has come again
Blessing thee and me.
Aos sí is an Irish name for faeries or spirits of the earth and fields. Lá Bealtaine is the Irish for Beltaine. Celebrated on May 1st, between spring equinox and summer solstice, it includes dousing and relighting the hearth fires, blessing the cattle and fields, and other rituals for cleansing and fertility.
Homecoming
In all the exotic lands of my travels
I have never seen the equal
of Acadia’s forests bursting against a
cobalt autumn sky
In all the cuisines I have tasted
I have yet to savour a better perfection
than an unadorned lobster claw
dripping with butter
In all the world’s scents and sensations
I have missed the salty slimy reek
of tidal flats and clam beds
restless under a summer sun
In all the winds and weathers I have sailed
I have never felt the same welcome as
of a Nor’easter kissing my face with
rough and careless scorn
In all the musics of my journeys
I have heard no melody so sweet as the brazen bullying
of bluejays in counterpoint with crickets
while falling apples thump a baseline
In all my years and continents away
I have ever and always dreamed
of sweet maple smoke drifting out
across the starlit snow
In all the crossroads I have stopped
I have found each road an alluring yet alien soil
until at last I have come home
where even an eagle has roots
August sounds
The cicadas sing me back
I am five years old
following Uncle Boyd
as Friday bounds ahead sniffing at everything
but he cannot find the cicadas
they rise and fall always where we are not
I am six years old
sitting on the front stoop with Uncle Boyd
watching fireflies send secret messages
above us the meteors flash through the Milky Way
and the cicadas sing hidden in the dark
I am seven years old
sitting in the field next to Uncle Boyd
the life around me moves and shakes the grass
crickets creak and a snake slides by
the cicadas surround us with serenity
I am sixty five years old
far and long from the Blue Ridge and Uncle Boyd
I watch his spirit walk the stars above me
tossing meteors like fireflies
crickets and northern frogs move the night around me
And the cicadas sing me back
Calling me
wheeling
screeling
the eagles fly high above
my head in my dreams
calling me
calling me
I follow
wilderness paths dark deep
loam between my toes
the scent of forest rises into my hair
calling me
calling me
sky is long
in looking glass lakes
mountain peaks
caress and nip at my feet
calling me
calling me
soaring
diving
I am one with this place
that binds me and frees me
in my heart space
calling me
calling me
Sonnet for a Forest
Lives falling down like raindrops around me day by day
The famous and the infamous and just humans that I’ve known
Music and memory makers of my growing and the way
They carved my path with signposts so I was not alone
Preceded by my parents I did not yet have to start
To be oldest or an elder with those other elders round
Yet the forest keeps on thinning as ancient ones depart
I’ve grown uncomfortably tall between heaven and the ground
The sky brightens and frightens as it’s making room for me
I practice sheltering understory younglings while I can
Each leaf must teach the lessons of the fruit from every tree
Before I am the last to reach high upon the land
I miss them I am them they nourish me root and limb
For only if I reach the sky will saplings know how to climb
Elixir of equinoxes
From fall turning to spring’s return
my maple paints the seasons
amber
Leaves glow in the dark
holding a lamp of long
summer days
The morning fog is burnished copper
slowly melting from
sky to earth
A rustling carpet of shifting gems
drifts in the sunlit breeze
spreading gold nuggets
Winter storms turn up topaz and ruby
embers torn from branches
kissing snow drifts
Deep garnet buds
are lighthouses for spring tides
of rising sap
With billows of maple flavoured steam
the sugaring shack slowly reveals
sweet secrets
From pale gold to deeper honey
rich smoked mahogany transformed
from crystal liquid
Holding the life of my maple tree
suspended in every drop of
amber
Walking past granddaddy
Year by year
I have dismantled the edifices
Built to protect my child me
From memory’s harm
Coming finally to the place
Where I recalled whole and all
Every sound, touch, scent
Of terror in those nights
I have no feelings about you
None at all
No hatred or even fear
Just the knowing what you did
All my emotions are for me
So much you never could take away
I locked them in and
Kept them safe
Howling ravenous beasts
Rattling the bars
Gnawing at my insides
All these years
One night the sounds
Scents were repeated
The beasts came loose
At last I was afraid
This time the arms around
Me and breath in my face
Did no harm as I let the beasts
Sing their song out loud
Howling with them I
Pained in keening harmony
Mourning the prey the kill
Snuffing over the bones of me
Fragments knit together now
I stand in the ashes of time
The burnt timbers of who I was
Fires gone cold
The chink of ice and whiskey breath
Are mere dislikes now
Holding no night tearings of flesh
No devourings of safeness in dreamtime
I am afraid of things
And battle demons of the past
But not you any more no
You are finally dead and gone
Perimeter
Off you go
Circling the perimeter
Looking inward and outward
Wondering which tendrils will snake
Around your ankles to trip you up
And what if
I am not a Lilliputian with
Tiny ropes and what if you are
Not Gulliver so easily tied down and
Instead we simply sing our dance
Remember you must
Convince this woman wolf
That you mean it more than fleeting
Hours so touch me your stories wild enough
For mating and hunting
I sing my song
Filling moonlight nights
Yes you growled and took my
Neck in your jaws in fierce love play
Aho it was good
Off you go
Circling the perimeter
Looking outward and inward
Wondering what you must do next
To win me for good
Autumn on the hill
Yesterday the maple tree
was clothed in fire
gold and scarlet
against a cobalt sky
Then came the winds
tearing through the woods
stealing colour and beauty
leaving winter
Sunrise reveals spent embers
scuttling along the ground
observed by black bare branches
lonely and cold
Right relations
I arrive on my land
My feet grow roots
Reaching deep into
Mother womb
My heartbeat rhyming
Time beyond time
I touch my land
Quietly the trees
Notice me there
Breathing me into
Larger universes
Eons ago and hence
I bespeak my land
Singing grows
As my ears become
Long and colourful
Hearing blood stories
Through my hands
I belong in my land
Plummeted and
Dancing into silence
Everything moving
Into the stillness
Which is who I am
I am my land
Shawnee Woman Traveling in Distant Lands
I learned already when I was small
A strong man wants a strong woman
And so in the tradition of the mothers of my family
I became a strong woman
Outspoken
Truthful
Proud
My steps and spirit were firm as I began my journeys
In the manner of my people
I traveled wherever my steps took me
Journeys in my mind, my spirit, my body
And so in the tradition of the mothers of my family
My journeying made me a stronger woman
Outspoken
Truthful
Proud
Learning the traditions of many peoples and holding my own
I bore a daughter and taught her when she was small
The traditions of the mothers of my family
She became a strong woman
Outspoken
Truthful
Proud
Her steps and spirit were firm as she began her journeys
In the beginning of my elder years I came to the lands of the northwest people
I learned that a broken man wants a broken woman
In the tradition of the fathers in his family
He tried to break my spirit into as many pieces as his own
I almost forgot that I was a strong woman
The new traditions from the fathers and mothers of his family taught
It is too dangerous to be
Outspoken
Truthful
Proud
I no longer lived the traditions of the mothers of my family
My traditional granddaughter learned the broken women ways
My steps took me to the edge of the cliff
I heard my granddaughter cry out to him
Stop!
I heard my granddaughter cry out to me
Stop!
And I remembered who I am and what I must do
For my granddaughter I learn again to be a strong woman
I teach her the traditions of her long ago mothers
Outspoken
Truthful
Proud
Only strong men who want strong women can follow our footprints
Living the road
My great uncle taught me that there are
two ways of walking
I can look down
and all I will see is the dirt
on the road by my feet
I will feel as if I am going nowhere
getting nowhere
with no direction
I can look up
at the sky and the clouds
seeing the sun and stars and moon
I will feel as if I am walking the world
the trees and lakes and rivers
discovering new paths
And so I walk looking up
and the road unfolds with every step
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