I left it there
returned it to the place of its beginnings
and watched while the surf rolled it over
and over again until it disappeared
like the brush when it’s lifted
at the end of the line
I don’t know why it is, Morrisseau
that we come to cling to stories so
only perhaps that something in us understands
that what we get from reality sometimes
is only the veneer, the fixative perhaps
that holds everything in place so the art
can happen underneath it all forever
Copper Thunderbird, you said to me
tell the story for the story’s sake
let the line lead them where it will
and don’t forget that the best ones come
from everything that’s gone before
so never be afraid to splash
enough colour to wake them up to that
and in that way, you said
they’ll get you in the end
and the truth is
they sometimes do
In Peigan Country 1993
You drive west out of Calgary
swing left at Bragg Creek to the east and down
through Millarville then due south again
letting the blacktop lead you through Turner Valley
while Van Morrison sings something about
travelling himself and with the windows open
the svelte jump of rhythm and blues
gets punctuated by the sudden cry
of a red-tailed hawk skimming across the highway
and the black comma of a bear
eating berries on a hill
you’ve come to love this drive
the unnecessary westward loop of it
you take just because it feels so good
to motor through this country
that rollicks with good cowboy humour
and rolls with the solemnity
of a well-told tribal tale
this ancient sea
crumpled up into foothills
at Turner Valley you swing west again
and climb into the arms of the Rockies
and you’ve switched to Leos Janacek now
letting the romantic swirl of violins
ease you upward so that
rounding a curve you look out across
the great purple stretch of prairie
and the sloping curve of the planet
framed by clouds and the ghostly echo
of the pounding hooves of Peigan ponies
chasing buffalo to the cliff in the gully
where women wait with knives and clubs
and honour songs to take the sacred meat
of their older brother and join it
to their own
the road bends into grizzly country
and there’s a long sloping downward curve
between the hump of twin ridges
and where it levels out there’s the sudden
smell of medicine sage from a meadow
flat as a table
and you ease the car to the shoulder
clamber out and squint across the wide green
to the resolute grey and weathered face
of the granite cliffs at its southern edge
there’s a packet of tobacco in the trunk
and retrieving it you set out across
this perfect meadow while ground squirrels
voice their irritation at your presence
and the smell of sage is so sharp
you can feel it in your lungs
at the far end the ground drops off at your feet
and there’s the gorge in a narrow
vertical drop to the river twisting
into rapids and pools far below
and the sage is growing thick as hair
on the sheer slope of it
so you offer tobacco and a prayer
and bend to gather this sacred medicine
and you can hear the river and the wind
and the voices of the squirrels
and the swish of the meadow grasses
like the whisper of fancy-dance shawls
and young girls’ feet kicking gracefully
to the beat of a drum
and you lose yourself so completely
in the timeless feel of this act of gathering
that when the wind picks up you smell
the rain and there’s a sudden bank of clouds
pushed in low above the cliffs
with the roll of thunder and the smell of lightning
and you stand and just for a second
in the middle of that meadow
you see a circle of tipis
and the people dancing
but there’s a flash of lightning
and the vision winks out
and you’re stood there
on the precipice
with an armful of sage
feeling honoured
and blessed and a little weak in the knees
but happier than you’ve ever been
walking back across that meadow
the rain pelts down and you lift your face
so that it can wash you
and reaching the car you tuck the medicine away
and turn to the rain again
and dance shirtless
in that meadow where the people came
in the Long Ago Time to sing and celebrate
this power you feel all around you
and in that rain and in the presence
of the vision you took for real
you came to realize that freedom
is the shrugging off of worldly things
and that in the ceremony of that
lies a common practical magic
that’s not so much Indian as it is human
an ordinary thing we lose
when we cease believing in things
like dancing shirtless in the rain
medicine and ceremony and prayer
and the ability of the planet to show us things
she keeps sheltered in her breast
driving home you listened to the music
of the medicine on the seat behind you
the sage, the women’s power
grandmother teachings
holding everything together
The Trouble with Indians
The trouble with these Indians he says, is they want everything
for nothing. There follows a clamour of grunts and the thump
of beer glasses hitting the table and you can tell by the look of
him that he’s just hitting his stride. The other thing, he says,
is that they blame us poor schmucks for what went down in
our great-great-grandfather’s time, like we gotta shell out now
for what happened then. This land claim business and this
treaty rights business and the whole reconciliation thing? It’s
all about money anyhow and me I don’t figure there’s a way
for anybody to buy their way back into the past. But you get
those brown fuckers started and all they want to talk about is
their grandfather and how if things were now like they were
then we’d all be better off. I call BS on that. Before we came
they had nothin’. They weren’t even using the land they lay
claim to now. There’s a round of “amen to that,” “give ’er
straight,” and “friggin’ A.” And someone shouts across the
room for another round and the guy settles into his chair and
meets everybody’s eye before he starts in again. We give ’em
guns and money, steel and liquor and an invitation to the
future and all they could ante up was a toboggan, snowshoes
and an ear or two of corn. W
e give them religion, education,
government, reservations and no frickin’ taxes and all they
can do is whine about someone stealing their land when they
weren’t lookin’. They get every friggin’ thing for free, free
house, free health care, free university, free land, free jobs at
the damn band office and still no frickin’ taxes and they still
whine about what they lost. But they can drink our liquor,
screw our women, claim our rightful property, sue our
government for cash they don’t try to earn in any kind of
respectful way and then they go and tell the world how bad
they’re done by here. He stands up and holds a hand over
his heart and belts out a line or two in a big bass voice.
“O Canada,” he sings. “Your home’s on native land.” Everyone
laughs like hell, even the waitress who drops him a free one.
When he sits back down there’s big, hearty, manly slaps on
the back and shoulders and he basks in it, swallows half his
beer and grins like a silly kid who farted at the table. You can
always tell an Indian, he says, pauses and looks everybody in
the eye, holds the moment, savours it, then says, can’t tell ’em
much . . . and laughter rocks the place again. He flicks his
watch up to his face, and drains off his beer and stands to
hitch his pants and straighten his suit. “Been fun but I gotta
work,” he says and turns to leave. “Where you workin’ anyway?”
someone asks. He turns at the door and levels a grin at
everyone. “Indian Affairs,” he says and his belly laugh follows
him out into the world.
Medicine Wheel
I
When you come to stand upon the land there’s a sense in you
that you’ve seen it all before. Not in any empirical way. Not
in any western sense of recognition but in the way it comes
to feel upon your skin, the way it floods you with recollection.
Standing here beside this tiny creek in the mountains you
suddenly remember how it felt to catch minnows in a jar.
The goggle-eyed sense of wonder at those silvered, wriggling
beams of light darting between stones and the feel of the
water on your arms, cool and slick as the surface of dreams.
You lived your life for the sudden flare of sunlight when
you broke from the bush back then and the land beckoned
through your bedroom window so that sometimes when the
house was dark and quiet you stood there just to hear the call
of it spoken in a language that you didn’t know but that filled
you nonetheless with something you’ve grown to recognize
as hope. So that you came to approach the land like an old
familiar hymn, quietly, respectfully, each step a measure, each
breath a softly exhaled note. That creek ran out of farmland
and wound its way to the reservoir behind an old mill, the
voice of it a chuckle, its edges dappled by the shadows of old
elms and its light like the dancing bluish-green eyes of the
girl on the bus you could never find a way to say a word to. So
you lay across a long flat stone to dip a mason jar elbows deep
and hung there, suspended in your boyhood, while minnows
nibbled at your fingertips and the breeze brought moss and
ferns and rot and scent of cows and flowers to you and you let
that arm dangle until the feeling went away then raised it with
minnows frantic in the sudden absence of their world. Oh,
you couldn’t keep them. Couldn’t carry them home like a
carnival prize, give them names or place them in a bowl upon
your desk. No, something in you understood even as a boy of
twelve that some things ache to be free and the charm of
them resides in their ability to be that freedom. So you let
them go. Let them swim away. But when you rose you carried
something of that creek, that cold against your arms, the
sun-warmed stone against your belly, the breeze, the light and
the idea of minnows, away with you forever. So that standing
here at fifty-five on the edge of another laughing creek you’re
returned to that place, and you’re surprised to find it here
like the feeling of opening your eyes after sleep and finding
home all around you once again. It’s a journey, this life.
A crossing of creeks on stepping stones where so much comes
to depend on maintaining balance on every careful placing
of the foot.
II
weweni bizindan
omaa ashi awe asemaa
listen careful
put the tobacco here
lay it soft upon the Earth and pray
say great thanks to your Mother
for everything she gives to you
and walk this way
in the path of the sun across the sky
for this is the trek
we all must make
so that we can gather medicine
to make this life a ceremony
anami’aawin — a prayer
to all that is
and everything that will be
upon our journey’s end
a great walking
this path whose final gift
is vision
III
them they call it the medicine wheel but us
we never had no need for wheels
so it’s always been a sacred circle
then and now for us
see, wheels my boy, had to be invented
and this was always just a gift to people
something that always was
and always gonna be
on accounta Spirit made it
them teachin’s never come from us
but we come to own them
when we make the journey
pass ’em on then
make sure to honour
the gift they are that way
that’s the medicine way, my boy
gwekwaadziwin — respect
just knowin’ that everything and everyone
has their place here
and us sometimes we need to help
each other find our way
if that’s a wheel
me I hope it keeps on turnin’
IV
you lie on this slant of hillside
staring up at a sky dimpled
with the light of countless
possible worlds
and it feels like you’re impaled
on it somehow
the motion of the planet
the tilt and whirl and spin of it
easing you upwards
back into star dust
Star People came once a long time ago
to sit at the fires of the Anishinabeg
and bring stories and teacher talk
that filled their world with dreams
the Old Ones say they were a gentle sort
and they brought the idea of ceremony
like a great and ancient light
and medicine was born
we all of us are energy they said
we all of us are dream and story
and in the end we return to it
to energy, to spirit, to the great
ongoing tale of our becoming
because there is no end, no finality
only a sacred circle spinning
within us
the spirit place we’re meant to travel to
to find the truth of us, the song
we carry forward i
nto dream
sung into story, sung into light
sung into spirit that comes to join
the energy of all things, the completeness
of that sacred circle spinning everywhere at once
all things coming true
together
the circle is wholeness
whose first principle is equality
that creates harmony
that creates the balance
that comes to mean
the humility that transcends all things
that itself evolves into the love
that’s born within and reflected out
to keep the circle spinning
they left us then
returning to the place of all beginnings
as the old ones say
and we began the journey to ourselves
the circle of us turning
into years into time into the history
of our time here
the story of us
all we ever have
all we carry with us
and all we leave behind
so you lie on a slant of hillside
against a bowl of stars
the earth pressed against your back
and the feel of that immense fullness
everywhere around you breathing
it into you until you rise finally
to make your way back
to whatever location held you in place
long enough for you to feel
lonely for the sky
V
You come to fifty-five like you came to thirteen. Expectant as a
pup at the door waiting for someone to kick it open and send
you galumphing out into the world again all legs and lungs
and joy. That’s the trick of it, really. That’s what they mean
when people say medicine wheel. Wisdom turning into itself
again. The journey we make that brings us back to the only
place it can — the place of all beginnings — the innocence
we are born in and the great, wide, all-encompassing wisdom
of that. You get to be a boy again, charmed by the simple,
the ordinary, the commonplace and seeing magic in it.
You’d make that journey anytime and the wonder of it lies
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