Runaway Dreams (11 page)

you stand on the shore

of the Winnipeg River

and watch the old men smoking

laughing and mending nets

their hands moving

almost by themselves

and when they look up

and see you there

they smile

their hands continuing

the dance they've learned

by touch

this is what it means

to be Indian, you say, Ojibway

the effortless, almost mindless

mending of the nets

we cast across

the currents of time

See them dance

against the slow

and even movement of the sky

so that to the eye

colours shift against

the grass and the drum

and the rattle of elk teeth

the swish of shawl, and the clatter

of bells on leggings becoming

the smile on young kids' faces

and the wistful grins of the old ones

sitting back in wheelchairs now

wishing they might dance again

to join the whirling, swirling, stomping, glee

of this great wheel of regalia danced

so that energies might become a blessing

and a prayer bestowed upon this sacred earth

where a simple song sung with drums

sends waves of light across

the universe to that spiritual place

where we all began our journeys

toward this place

where it all comes together

like a vision that travels in

a circle of prayer

to encircle all who

come

here

now

Crow came to my room last night

dressed in a checkered western shirt

and boots and jeans too tight in the rump

so that he squawked soprano

and groused vociferously

about the lack of a proper avian line

he's hip to things like that

Crow gets around, you know

him and Coyote, well

they've been known to carouse

something awful in the streets of Milan

and even though no one likes

a knock-down loaded Trickster much

they've got a fashion sense to die for

all that fur and feather accessorizing

to go with the Pucci (Coyote's call) scarves

and the Salvatore Ferragamo calf-skin

bag that Crow adores because he

can't hack the shoes

(they don't call them crow's feet for nothing

is how he says it)

anyhow, Crow was on the lookout for Raven

whom he'd heard had been seen

in the vicinity and needed

some advice on metaphor or allegory

aphorism or some such Trickster trick

because he had a gig in Kasabonika Lake

and them Oji-Crees up there

had heard all his schtick before

and the kids were even using

his best lines in the schoolyard now

Crow was after belly laughs

and Coyote couldn't help much with that

on account of he always wanted

to make them howl

although he did have some of the

snappiest zingers in the Trickster biz

and Crow himself had busted a gut

every now and then when Coyote

let loose with those moonlight

prowl stories of his

Raven knew the ins and outs of Trickster-ism

he'd even hung with the big guys

Nanabush and Wesakechak

creating mayhem in a tamarack bog

and driving the local Cree kids wacko

just before they drove south in

a battered '57 Chevy

to dig the crazy Cajun food

in N'aw Lins before Katrina

so he knew a thing or two

Crow hopped from the dresser

to the window ledge and fluffed

his inky feathers in the moonlight

and laid the full force of his

beady obsidian eyes on me

and cackled and croaked

and wondered if we had

any jalapeno-stuffed olives in the house

or the new Black Crowes CD

because Tricksters gotta stay hip

you know

it's where the best bits come from

so I told him that this wasn't

really Raven country but that

there were a lot of crows around

if he wanted to ask

“any nesting in the sunshine?” he asked

I asked him why and he wriggled his shoulders

in the red-checkered shirt

and hiked the jeans up some

“always on the lookout for a hot black chick,”

he said and mimicked a rim shot

and a cymbal crash

he was right

he was in desperate need of schtick

it's so still you can feel

the boundaries of things shimmer

with the effort it takes

to hold themselves in

even the birds are hushed

and in this perfect silence

where not even a faint breeze strays

the idea of manitous

hovered over everything

becomes the first wavered light

of the sun through the clouds

and the storm that gathers to the west

announces itself

in a fanfare of silence

small wonder, you say

that there's no word

for “power” in your language

only
spirit

only
medicine

but then

there's no word for “obvious”

either

for Jennifer and Ron Ste. Marie

they say that in the old days

the scouts would come to sit and watch

for any sign of enemies coming

out of the purple mountains

or across the hard iridescent platter

of the lake

from this height the land

stretches out across the territory

of the Secwepemc, the Shuswap

as it's said in the settler talk

and there's history in the sudden flare

of space, the country below us reduced

to angle and a narrowing where the lake

pulls our focus forward into the hard vee

of its disappearing

so that it becomes like time, really

wending, winding, curving in upon itself

turning into something else completely

while we breathe the exhalations

of the breath of those who came

and went before

wind on stone

the clock of us ticking

relentlessly

I can hear the cries of battle rising

upward on drafts of air

just as I feel the solemn peace

that fell over young men who sat for days here

praying, fasting, seeking the vision

that would lead them into manhood

perhaps becoming one of those who fell

beneath the hammered blows of conflict

amidst the clumps of medicine sage

on the sere grasslands below

it's a sacred place because of that

this place of becoming and leaving

this warrior place where the spirit of a people

resides in wafts of air

risen from their territory to climb beyond

here to the place of old voices

whose home is the wind

eagle wings skimming

silently across

this hallowed blue

lying against the ancient rock

feeling the push of it on my back

the sun bakes everything in radiant waves

that shimmer and dance

so that looking out across the battlefields below

the land itself weaves into motion

the sun dance maybe

or another act of being

I don't know why places like this

affect me so

only that the search for a sense

of my own history involves many histories

the sum of us lodged within these sheer bluffs

so that coming here becomes a pilgrimage of sorts

a deliberate marching, plodding, shuffling forward

and backwards at the same time

to reclaim a piece of me

I didn't know existed

this rock a vertebrae

in the great spine of story

of our time here

together

songs rise higher

borne on air

returning

for Debra

I walk by with another armload and watch you scanning

papers for signs of life. This life that passed. It's funny how

something like a postcard scribbled against the gunwales of

a sloop off Wanganui can come to mean so much. Vague

hieroglyphics cast from the hands of an unknown people,

place and time and distance referenced by what's implied and

not by what you know, a connection you feel as paper in the

hands. Still, you plumb each line and image like a sounder

reading the depth of unknown waters, breathless for the tale

born by echo. There's a lifetime in these boxes, and in their

faded inks and snapshots running to opaque your father's

world fills itself in hint by hint, line by line, detail by detail,

until finally, as the boxes disappear you assemble a keepsake,

a shrine they so inelegantly call a “scrap” book — the only

treasure you can take away. They are the sum of us the things

we keep and in the hands of loved ones once we're gone,

those paper trails of living retain their sense of self, sit there

squarely in the palm, crooning old jazz ballads, moaning a

particular blues, singing their histories.

there's nothing too traditional

about a tuna steak fashioned

into burgers to someone

with sturgeon as a totem

but you could make the case

that
wasabi
is an Ojibway word

if you said it slow enough

still I've learned to brandish a knife

and I can mince without too much

damage to my manliness

and now that I know there's things to skin

I can retain a savage decorum

even if it's just an onion

and I face the whole

slice and dice thing

like a cavalry charge

over a battlefield of lettuce

but there's something elemental in

the hunkering over a stove or a grill

that hearkens back to fires

glowing orange in the night

and the smell of meat roasting on a stick

so that this whole getting supper thing

has its merits in a purely

cross-cultural way

even if I flunk the miso tuna burger test

the hunter prowls Safeway aisles now

the gatherer chases bargains

in the produce section and hey

shiitake
is a ceremonial word you know

honest