QU’APPELLE AND ESL
(Cree – Kah-tep-was “The river that calls”)
They come today
from countries far away
to learn this country’s
names for river, lake, and tree
There was a time
the natives of this land
sat in these same desks
in braided fear
learning to forget them
DISSECTING THE FROG OF WAR
And when did the buffalo
driven over the cliff
become the lemming leaping
as if the decision was his own
WISDOM TEETH
Eskimo candy
is what we called
the marrow in the bones
If we had learned from them
instead of them from us
we’d all still have our teeth
ALAS POOR…
And we in this new old land turning up
with our plow
hammer heads, and arrowheads, and sometimes
a bone or two
and if one would be an uncrushed skull it would
be no Yorick that we knew
This noun, once verb, would mock us
in its grinning
all those with whom we might converse
are laid neath Hamlet’s soil
His redder kin scattered
like his bones
NORTH OF THE MEDICINE LINE
Given the theory
with some evidence
that the natives of this land
had about the same tolerance
for alcohol as they had for smallpox
and because someone “knew better”
they were not allowed to buy it
If your husband, although a member
of a supposed superior European race
showed a weakness for the drink
and a strong tendency to spend
the grocery money on the demon rum
You’d just go to the proper authorities
have him knocked down one race
quickly added to the Indian list
and barred from every bar
And there we were
children of the tolerant Swiss
eating nigger toes at Christmas
(we think them Brazil nuts now)
all thinking it all perfectly natural
DREAM CATCHER
(for Maia)
Boogie man boogie man get out of my dream
Boogie man boogie man can’t make me scream
Cause I’ve got a dream catcher over my bed
I’ve got a dream catcher right over my head
Now only sweet dreams can make it through
and boogie man boogie man that ain’t you
Boogie man boogie man get out of my dream
Boogie man boogie man can’t make me scream
You were feeding on my fears all night long
that’s what was making you big and strong
Now dream catcher and me have got you beat
so you have to eat at Susie’s down the street
Boogie man boogie man get out of my dream
Boogie man boogie man can’t make me scream
A KINDER GENTLER GOD
As we look around the world today we see
with God as our father in trouble all are we
Fathers as you know, often have a tendency
towards discipline, judgement and wrath
while grandparents almost always
take a wiser, gentler path
There may be much to learn
as we choose, or create our deity
from the Blackfoot, Sioux and Cree
who still gather at Grandfather’s knee
EAGLE BONE WHISTLE
Chain breathing with the Sioux
at a South Dakota sun dance
Praying that I might become
more perfectly hollow
That thy music may play
more beautifully through me
WHAT WE OWE
For all those who harmed
my father and my father’s father
For all those my father
and my father’s father brought to harm
How do we now walk arm in arm
Shall we start by tallying
what we owe and where the payment ends
An apology for sure
A compensation maybe
Never a revenge
STONE HAMMERS
In my house
two stone hammers
picked from the ancient land
where Cree and Blackfoot fought and died
Beside the deep ruts of the Red River carts
showing yet through a hundred years of grass
Mounted police on the Fort Walsh trail
to stop the whisky and move the rail
Stony silent bookends now
with many more stories to tell
than the pages they hold between them