his nephew’s vote with who won’t need
it until he gets out of jail anyway
and there’s no one watching out
for shit like that even though it happens
everywhere and the people pay the price
as in the suicide rate that still hangs high
above the national average
(though why they even have a stat for that
boggles you at the best of times)
when you open your eyes there’s
nothing before you but the land
and in its absolute stillness
there’s the sound of wind on water
and as you push to hear it you discover
that you have to really want to
it doesn’t just come to you
you have to crave it, yearn for it
ache for the luxuriant whisper that says
harmony happens on its own here
when you come to believe that it fills you
and you become beach and wave and lake
and mountains humped against the semi-dark
and a moon that sails across the sky like hope
another thing you have to really want
in order for it to happen
in the end it’s as Indian as it gets
this reaching out to feel connected to imagine
becoming a part of things displaced
from you by issues and bothers and hurt
the Old Ones say that harmony and separation
cannot occur in the same time and place
and maybe that’s it
this whole native issues thing
that you ultimately become
what you believe in most
even a planet chasing a moon
across time and space
September Breaks — Paul Lake
The lake exhales a jubilant mist that carries
within it the desperate calls of loons
making preparations to wing south
and there’s a bear ambled down
to drink and eye the yards hewn
from mountainside lush with blackberry
late season saskatoons and the trashcan
someone left the lid ajar upon
as an eagle cuts a slice out of the sky
then gives way to the osprey clan
hungry for trout and the muskrat who
claimed a home beneath your friend’s dock
noses an expanding vee into the water
placid with chill and the feel of the
mist rising slowly above it all
like silent applause and the eagle
flies into the sun rising in a blunt
cleft between the ribs of
mountains
for the longest time I didn’t know
that such a place existed
couldn’t believe really
that it could even be imagined
let alone allow me to stand here
at this window with a mug looking
over it all stunned into believing
suddenly that beauty exists somewhere
beyond the vague hope you carry
that you can change the world
with words
you can’t really
in the end it’s just you
that you adjust to fit the situation
and mornings like this remind you
that ugliness has a reservation
to sit all churlish and smug
waiting for you to disbelieve
but you can’t, not now
not after finding the way
this all sits between your ribs beating
like a second heart
calling you from the window
to the desk where you’ll sit
and peck away like a frantic rooster
for the words to lift the sun
back into the sky and call September forward
because it’s not really fall
when it elevates you so
White Shit
Seventeen without a clue. Wandering like a tourist in my own
life, picking up whatever I thought might fit, might flesh me
out, give me meaning, when the old Indian across the table at
the Mission asked through a mouthful of thin stew and bread,
“What’s with all the white shit?” Then in stir, six months for
stupidity, the native guy with braids and a “today is a good day
to die” tattoo above his heart leans on the bars of my cage,
studies my row of books and asks, “What’s with all the white
shit?” Then, the girl I wanted so much to love, long flowing
black hair, angular face, obsidian eyes and a name like Rain
Cloud Woman in her Cree talk, wanders about my room
picking up the trinkets and the stuff, eyeing it like relics,
squints at the Beethoven records and the Judy Chicago print
on the wall, looks at me and laughs and asks, “What’s with
all the white shit?” They cut me, those words. Sliced clean to
the bone, through the fat and gristle of the world to lay open
the glistening bone of fact and I studied my brown face in
the mirror in the hard yellow slant of the morning sun.
“What is with all this white shit?” I asked myself. And that’s
when I turned Indian. That’s when I became a born-again
pagan/heathen/savage, dancing, singing, turquoise- and
buckskin-wearing, chanting, drumming, guttural, stoic, hand-
sign talking, long haired, feather wearing, walking-talking
iconographic representation of the people, man. There was
no room in that for any white shit. But I was young then and
hadn’t heard the voices and the teachings of my people and
hadn’t turned my heart to truth. It would take some doing.
It would take some isolation and the loneliness that false
pride instills and it would take a desperate reaching out to
belong somewhere, anywhere, with anyone. Three decades
later I have seen some serious shit, man, and life is all
about the truth of things. So I sit drinking coffee on a deck
overlooking a mountain lake in a community of white folk,
surrounded by computers, a TV, music, books, a pickup
truck, a car, guitar, piano, appliances, conveniences and
responsibilities. But there’s an Indian at the heart of me.
I feel him here where the crows speak Ojibway, where the
breeze carries hints of old songs sung around a fire in the
night, where a hint of sage in the air shows me the line where
ancient and contemporary meet, telling me that traditional
and cultural, in the end, becomes where you live, where you
set your soul to rest and I look around at fifty-five and see that
where I am is always where I wanted to be. Life has become
a ceremony and The Indian sans beads, sans feathers, sans
get-ups and trickery surrounded by white shit and glad of it.
Mother’s Day
You take me somewhere I have never been before and the
immensity of the landscape fills me with wonder. It took me
a long time to become the kind of man for whom wonder was
a property of being. But you took me there easily like shadows
breaking in sunlight. I know you wonder sometimes about
your measure, how the world sees you and it’s funny because
it’s you that gives measure to me, and that, I suppose, in the
final analysis is what motherhood is all about: the transfer
of magic conducted gently like a hand upon the brow. It
lives in the eyes of your children when they look at you.
Those times wh
en you’re not looking, busy with the pots or
arranging things, your head bent in concentration, working
at getting it right for them. They look at you with eyes filled
with wonder. At this woman who bears their chin, their nose,
their eyes, their look of solemn thoughtfulness and I see them
inhabit the same landscape as I do. All of us transported and
transformed by virtue of allowing you to touch us. I love you
for that. For the anonymity of motherhood you travel in,
oblivious most times to the practical effect of magic you
carry in your hands.
To Displaced Sons
In your hands I lay the articles of faith
the elements of this teaching way
that has brought me so far out
of darkness and into the light
of understanding who I am and how
I got to be here as a human being
a man and an Ojibway
that’s the thing of it you know
this act of discovery
goes on forever whether
you want to believe that or not
because we’re created to be those three things
three truths of us that never change
for the length of time we’re here
and our work is the search
for the meaning of those things
so we can carry the teachings on
to where our spirit travels next
on its eternal search
for its highest expression
of itself
this is what our elders say
so that you can never be less
than what you were created to be
you can only become more
and the heart of that teaching means
you never have to qualify for anything
you never have to prove yourself worthy
because you always were
the three truths of you
man, Ojibway, human being
inarguable, inextinguishable, alterable only
by Creator’s hand
and she’s not likely to
along this path there are many
examples of what it means
to be a good human being
watch for them
and follow their lead
because there are teachers everywhere
even in the most unexpected places
where you wouldn’t think to look
they stand there holding mirrors
so that we can see ourselves
and become more
I have found saints in prison cells
and holy women under lamp lights
and great philosophers eating
the humblest fare behind dumpsters
and visionaries in one-room shacks
at the end of gravel roads
burning twigs for warmth
in the very least of these
was always something to carry with me
on the journey to myself
I just had to want to find it
when people learn to live with little
they open themselves up to more
not of worldly things or grandeur
but of spirit
so when the settlers came and saw our people
living simple lives upon the land
they thought us poor and backward
and when we opened our hands
to share the plenty we knew existed
they thought us savage and ill prepared
for a world that demanded fortune
but they were blind to where our ceremonies
directed us
not to a salvation promised on some other plane
but right here on this ground
where we learn to live and become
the people we were created to be
Creator is everywhere around us
we are joined from the moment we arrive
and we sprang from this Earth
so that we can never be lost
we are always home
this is what it means to be
a human being
in the Indian way
it means the world is our teacher
its rhythms and its motions are our university
in the ones who fly
the ones who crawl and swim and walk
four-legged are spirit teachers meant to guide us
and they hold within them
great examples of fortitude, steadfastness
harmony, balance, sharing, loyalty, fidelity
compassion, love, truth, wisdom
and sacrifice
that we need to learn if we are
to learn to live well and long
and take the skin of this planet
as our own
watch them these spirit teachers
they live honestly
for they were born knowing
exactly who and what they are
and have no need of the agony
of the search
they are our protectors
and we honour them by following their natures
seeking to reflect their spirit
in our own
and this is why we call them dodem
or totem as the settlers learned to say
in the plants and grasses and even
the rocks are things meant
to inform the way we travel
they teach us of community really
like when the sapling reaches for the sky
from the ribs of the Grandmother tree
when she lies down in the forest
or the stones offering their faces
to the rain so the moss can breathe
in these things are elemental teachings
that bring us to ourselves
that teach us to be human animals
neither less nor more than any other being
this is what the elders say
what we learn is that life is a circle
and the moment that we enter it
the first principle that comes into practice
is equality
for we are energy and we are spirit
and there is no hierarchy there
nor does there need to be
this is why our ceremonies and our rituals
are built on circles
because we are all teachers
because we are all mirrors
because we need each other
to find the truest possible expression
of ourselves
we come out into this reality in humility
naked and crying in the innocence
that allows us to be carried forward into trust
which in turn grows into the strength
that allows us to look within ourselves
for the truth that is our own
and in this way we attain a degree
of the wisdom that allows us to return
to the innocence that bears us
forward into the sacred circle of learning
again for that is what life is
always was
and always will be
there is no end to circles
only continuance
and learning never stops if we allow it
so when we arrive at that point in time
when our joints are old and tired
and we find ourselves aged and bearing
the white in our hair
that is the colour of knowing
we are blessed to find
the greatest teaching waiting for us there
that this journey toward becoming
a good human being, this struggle
results always in our becoming
good men and women
and ultimately good Ojibway
or whoever we were created to be
bec
ause we learned the greatest lessons first
when we learned to be good people
I became a good Indian after
I became a good man who learned
to be a good human being
that’s the natural way of things
and it can’t occur in any other order
so my wish for you is that you learn
to see the world as altar
where everything you need to pray
and sing and hope and dream
and become
is laid out there for your use
when you choose to pick it up
because the truth is, my sons
that’s where the power lives
within the choice that we are born with
choose to allow
choose to discover
choose to become more
and in this way you become
a creator
aligned with the spirit of creation
and filled with the immense power
of possibility
the magic that is itself a circle
containing everything
I have learned in my time here
that we are born covered in things
like love and trust and loyalty
humility and hope and kindness
and that sometimes the world
has a way of rinsing those things off us
so we stand naked and crying again
but at that very moment
when we want it the most
Creator allows us to find a way
to re-cover ourselves
in those spiritual qualities
so don’t be afraid to fall
it’s how we learned to walk
in the first place
instead, go forward in all things
and take the teachings with you
so that in quiet times in quiet rooms
or somewhere out upon the land
you can lay them on the altar again
and choose to pick them up
and carry on
I’ll be with you
standing at the edge of a forest somewhere
or on a rock overlooking a stretch of water
breathing and laying tobacco down
in gratitude and mumbling quiet prayers
for the joy of your becoming
Runaway Dreams Page 9