by Rita Wong
There is still a long way to go in my journey with water, which is also a journey of becoming worthy to live as a guest on these sacred lands of the Coast Salish peoples, but that day taught me the power of what can be accomplished together. Not much in my Albertan education prepared me for that moment of sheer love for the land, waters and life, but luckily, something deeper within, both younger and older at once, recognized the gift of that moment. Immense gratitude to the Tsleil-Waututh Sacred Trust for their generous and courageous leadership.
Gratitude also to Makhabn, known as the Bow River, whose waters kept me alive the first twenty years of my life, & who taught me the power of water from an early age, as it steadily flowed through the City of Calgary where I grew up. That river is what prepared me to love this inlet, other rivers, the ocean.
night gift
make space and let the night speak through you—what will the darkness say?
will it sigh the song of night-cleaners, the lament of the wrongly imprisoned, the rage of the ragged, the dispossessed? how will the night take you back? will you be the vessel for earth shatter, hydro poison, ancestral revenge? perhaps steady weeds, growing irrepressibly into the cracks, urban repurposing, straddling both the drugs that kill & the ones that heal? the globe moves around the sun, unstoppable, feeding pine trees & the petro-state alike, giving us the days and nights by which to stand with the trees, what the oil industry calls overburden, or to die more rapidly, more stupidly, by peak oil. as rivers & oceans fill with carcinogenic wastes from the petroleum-plastic supply chain, the political systems follow, stuffed full of suncorpse & tired old neocolonial ego that refuses to stop growing until it reaches the limits of the planet’s patience. who knows what alliances & monkey wrenches will be enough to stop the greed of the greasy machine? what i do know is the humble migrants who’ve travelled the ocean have felt its wisdom more deeply than an arrogant elite that doesn’t heed the world’s necessary stories. jail the stories & the storytellers, but they will keep speaking the night, until empire expires, with or without the multitudes alive. in this race may we be ready to move fast, yet steady enough to encompass musicians & lake gatherings, forests & guerrilla gardens, fuelled by a love more immense than the injustices we’ve inherited. we need to live the world that is possible even while we struggle through war. respect living coasts & fluid watersheds, not murderous imperial borders. in grief & in celebration, in fear & in courage, in anger & in compassion, the night replenishes us so that we may continue to embody her songs.
too long a sacrifice can make a toxin of the earth.
o when may it suffice?
一
we burn ancient sunlight & petrified ancestors
like there’s no tomorrow
dig & draw up dirt so relentlessly we tip toward stranglehold
does capitalism’s “progress” induce collapse?
ed said, “everything’s been touched by oil”
i look through plastic glasses caught under
petroleum by-product lenses
first unwitting then unwilling recipient of
profit-seeking pillage sickening scale
stunned with eerie disquiet escalating horror pulses
carcinogens every which way
brutal menace monstrous crime scene
poison & violence leaking
into the Athabasca river to the fast-melting Arctic
systemic amnesia operates on the earth’s forest green skin
cuts out life with detached, sociopathic precision,
overburdens pines & birches
dead ducks, canaries in the coal mine, turgid trout,
delusional destruction spreads out
explosive & erosive, manufactured discontent digs for
more, more, more
mammoth gashes extracted till abandoned
like so many arrogant american swimming pools in the desert
or chinese dams big enough to make the planet tremble for days
imperial delirium’s race to the bottom
at the expense of the watchers
an expanse of hidden relations disregarded for distraction,
an immature culture pumped
on blunt ambition, hydrocarbon hubris,
such malignant pustules to be
shrugged off by intensifying storms & quakes
banal tyranny, drunk-on-god trick, devastating heists from
the banks of the river scarring the earth
scaring the unborn who hover, wondering what meets them
二
upon seeing her capture reflected within burtynsky’s photos,
the hostage of the petro-state
renders a diagnosis of stockholm syndrome, self-administers
the necessary remedies
so terribly simple, so utterly unachieved so far:
to kick the oil addiction for love of water
to inhabit the earth with the dignity owed to life-giving dirt
to fulfill our responsibilities chthonic & cosmic
to make a story large enough, generous enough to become
better neighbours
with the winged, the finned, the four-legged, the stumbling
two-leggeds
another world is not only possible, she is already here, carrying
on underneath our feet
reconstituting us with each new sip of ancient water
reassembling us into the sacred headwater’s continuum
so we can aspire to a wiser, wider story, felt in the elders’
strong, calm hands raised in Iskut,
Klabona Keepers hold our fate in the courage to say enough
witness this ghastly corporate moment striving to mature into
great return
a blessed unrest like three-thousand-year-old rice paddies
mirroring our stars back to us
reminding us to live within the budget of what the sun
abundantly provides each day
meridians align to rebalance what’s vital,
downstream living bodies
countless geese flocking overhead, wind-swayed cottonwood,
magical caribou, garrulous groundhogs, handcuffed
grannies, plentiful plankton, playful nieces, spawning
salmon, song-rich mothers, mountain goats, resolute
swanning, steady sheep, eagle soar, autonomous aunties,
hemlock, wolf howl, venerable moose, grizzly bears, swift
horses, nimble nephews, humble fathers, blessed cedar,
spawning char, steady swimmers, storytellers, rivers
devotedly rising from the unceded earth against systems of mass
destruction
committing to the union of the living
a current of spacious canoes propelling renewal with each
stroke
a murmuration of ancestors and descendants soaring forth
where the poison is found, look for the cure nearby,
honouring sacred debts all the time
how do we give back more than we have taken?
what better gifts can we offer?
kindred spirit, autonomous water remembers
forest before rubble
revives the forest after the terror is reined in
a magical dictionary from bitumen to sunlight
cadence : the sound of one material meeting another, hello!
: heartbeat, disrupted & adapting
: tree percussion, funky fir cavitation
crushed : pressing so hard as to lose one’s own shape
: tiny privatized homes the size of skulls or microchips relying on rare earth across continents
: what capitalism has executed upon forests
ancestors : holding my body up through cellular memory, anonymous
: condensed over eons into mineral wealth
: material in the headlights, reconfigured as a vintage car more retro than we know, heavy metals millennia old
carries : one act of the written word
: a sapling song courtesy of xylem, transpires to proliferate in the ether
ceremony : shaping one’s gestures to honour what has not been lost, just buried
: the music that we forget is music
mercurial : a host of premonitions, close to the source
: the sound of fire in the sky
micro : a power we don’t have words for
: the burgess shale in your eyelashes
bitumen : buried ancestors, unearthed & burned to expand the ocean
: pitched sacrifice zone wherever it bubbles up, hellishly excavated
sunlight : in orchestra with monthly pull, nocturnal howl
: beaming in the future, a planetary revolution, a graced turning
祖先
remembering the future
a circular muscle, tubular imperative, propels internal concoctions
a transit from warm inner mulch to outer lucency burbles
as traffic empties its gasoline chambers into the atmosphere
expanding into gas eight times its liquid weight
mutual promise unmet though embedded within our compromised states
daily peristalsis regular & rhythmic
rates of flow through my riverbank body
every highway putting out the fire with gasoline
volatility standards lowered in a race to the bought-out
hedging bets in the midst of a photochemical frenzy
the bottom line, the one on which we all traverse, is as free
as the quiet air you breathe
horse & sail more prescient than passé
in an abundance of sun, wind, absorbent, acidifying, expanding ocean
skeletal starfish quiver, melt & pulse scrotal with emissions
many-chambered hearts, one-chambered sky
behold a dizzying ballad of reckless express
until quiet & beauty return to the land
immersed in chlorinated water
immersed in formaldehyde off-gas
immersed in car exhaust
immersed in the oxygen produced by oceanic plankton
immersed in windy chinook
immersed in barbecue aroma
immersed in smog
immersed in someone’s sneeze
immersed in the oxygen produced by cedar
immersed in the oxygen produced by fir
immersed in the oxygen produced by hemlock
immersed in carbon dioxide
immersed in the colonial present
immersed in loonsong
immersed in endocrine disrupting dust
immersed in the smell of the ocean
immersed in stale air
immersed in English
immersed in ego-jacking capitalism
immersed in thought
immersed in ancestral respect, or not
immersed in natureculture
immersed in electromagnetic fields
immersed in gravity
immersed in radio waves
immersed in multilingual contact zone
immersed in transmission frequencies
immersed in ultraviolet rays
immersed in someone’s perfume
immersed in ambient sound
immersed in neighbourhood vibe
immersed in urban hurry
immersed in pedestrian drift
immersed in the protocol of sunlight
immersed in the irrepressible commons, come on!
immersed in q’élstexw
unsung service
for Staləw, the Fraser River
perched on a paddlewheeler, typing on my fraught laptop
on the Samson V, in the midst of freshet
big puppy-eyed, sleek river otter silently glides.
together otter & i witness raw logs floating down the Fraser
accelerated export to empires south & east of us
quickly doubling sales of tree kill, when we, the moose & the murrelets want
the trees here, alive
tree care is self-care
ship’s whistle blasts, deep & foggy
once manned by Captain Drinkwater, trans Samson calls
shallow, steady & strong, she faces the port where mazdas & audis enter
as raw logs exit, the engine of capitalist ideology attacks the river
constant container activity as swallows zip, seagulls dive
ladybug, bee, placid mandarin ducks, humans promenade
flip through Meteorology for Seamen & The Theory and Practice of Seamanship on the desk
where does the museum exhibit begin & end?
what will future earthlings find in the neoliberal middens left behind?
microbial murmur: tardy but still need to act up
zoanosis prompts
crossing thresholds, game-changers on elder river
footsteps above, creosote beside & interference below
industrial habit morphs fish home into trade zone
underneath the opaque river, life i cannot see
implacable sturgeon carries on
in the river that brought us all here to this city
the river that holds our future in its flows
We are tardigrades and tawny owls, river dolphins and rockhopper penguins, slow sloths and fast elk. We are not stuffed animals to be deserted and betrayed as your political “leaders” listen to money and ignore the acidifying ocean, the tumultuous tsunami, hurricanes, floods that shout climate instability. We are your relatives. When you capture us in zoos, you diminish yourselves and us. We precede and supersede Moloch, the Koch brothers and the patriarchal mind games that have been shoved down our throats and into our gall bladders. Some of us will survive you and some of us have not. We call upon you to remember your ancient oaths, your debts to all realms that enable your existence, your obligations as earth-dwellers.
medicines in the city
一
horsetail hints
at abundant water beneath
transformed into fine green nodes
sprouting up from cracks in pavement
near Main & Broadway
atop what was once Brewery Creek
horsetail hails the sturdy spore, the perpetual wind
its ally in propagation
scrub brush, toothbrush, remover of toxins
horsetail ever-so-slowly heals inflictions
a living fossil who quietly outlasts our cities
soaking up the acid soil we leave behind
二
lavender blossoms
in the traffic circle
guerrilla garden tenacity
fed by rain, sun, evolving bylaws
car exhaust & pedestrian breadth
big doggie breath, small doggie do
fed by kiddy bustle
sensible cyclists balance
loaves of bread in their baskets
buddies play Jimi Hendrix
their guitars kiss the sky
healers turn buds into
salve, tea, soap, story
elementary activity
primary activity
an East Van dance
a black soil miracle
reassuring windsway
contingent cousin
roundabout whiff
soothing the city
one modest root<
br />
by mythic root
surviving with
bee by living bee
三
found in fields from Halifax to Vancouver
plantain’s nickname is white man’s footprint
for the way it gets everywhere
yet there is also native plantain
to poultice your cuts & rashes
to heal the sores of everyday life
plantain sits & spreads
mown down & ever growing
overlooked neighbour
gently toughing us all out
四
salal remembers the forests
before the streets
its juicy leaves & tender berries
hold Salish history from the sun
tickled with glistening rains
bolstered with the languorous weight of summer heat
salal ripens
五
after eighty destructive years
industrial blockage of salmon habitat
we celebrate this uncanny return in the city:
salmon to Still Creek in 2012
alert, adept swimmers
kindle, perpetuate, astound
with sleek scaly stamina
miraculous as the salmon that grace Musqueam Creek
with each year’s turn around the sun
an unbroken vow between relatives
body burden: a moving target
bone, tendon, muscle, joint inflamed
knuckle, wrinkle, nail, ten half moons
a seven-pound skin, well distributed
so light i don’t feel what i carry
rashes, scars, bruises, faint scratches
eczema reminds
fragile barrier, easily broken
inner oozes out, itchy lymph