Prairie soil
Watched branches drift by
On the Red River
“I married a sauvage,” he laughed
“I made four Métis.
Beware the sauvages!” he’d say
Wagging his finger at the kids.
I made green onion soup
And told them to beware white men, black tobacco, and
Grain whiskey
“Where are your parents?” they asked their mother
But I laughed, too
Said, “My children will be my parents
You, daughter, will remember me as a sauvage,
As a child of the long grass
And you will be a mother
Of a brave people”
But I wished I could touch
The stone walls
And two old French people
Looking in a mirror
For a long-lost son.
Belief
(Conflict of beliefs in Métis country)
“I would appreciate,”
Said the Jesuit
“If you would not cross yourself
When talking of the Wind Spirit
As if you believed. You cannot
Have God and this pagan spirit
Both in your mind.”
“I would appreciate,”
Said my husband, watching the wall,
That those castrés in Montreal
Spend a few days on the grasslands
Hunting buffalo. Or maybe
A very big hour in a very small canoe
On the Big Sea Water.”
He puffed at his pipe. The wind
Blew smoke down the chimney
Tapped on the one glass pane
Jean had spent his best on.
“I think God knows the Wind Spirit
A lot better than you, my friend.”
Dark Clothes began again, but
The wind snatched the door open,
Took the hat off the young priest
And slammed the door again.
Outside, thunderclouds ranted.
Inside, Jean poured wine
For both of them.
“I think,” said the man in black afterwards,
“That I’ll check The Book again.
I probably missed a passage somewhere.”
I surely missed a passage somewhere.”
When You are Not With Me
(Jean’s poem for his Heron Feathers the first summer he goes to the buffalo hunt without her)
When you are not with me, he said, I am become old
Like a forgotten ring of stones
And yellow weeds
Far out on the prairies
When you are not with me I am become silent
As a coulee
Where the fingers of the wind
Cannot reach, and the creek
Is become dust.
Out of a Prairie Thunderstorm
(Every badly treated group can use a savior)
In the Holy Mide huts in our village
Mostly men
Singing songs
To the Grandfather winds
That berries might ripen
And the world might be kind
In the church
Men, all men
Chanting to the Old Guy
That the skies might open, and
The world disappear
Someday, out on the prairie
Where the sky holds seven eagles
In the hour of that terrible silence
Before the thunderstorm
The whirlwind will make the one
Who’ll set us free
Her pure right hand
Reaching out to
Caress the forehead
Of the world.
Heron Feathers and Rabbit Trails
(Jean has learned to love Heron Feathers.)
Across the landscape of my mind you
Plodded steadily, and though
Your feet hurt, you watched the horizon, for
What storm the purple hills beyond
Might lurk.
But no, in the bright sunlight you only found the
Grass longer than you had thought
And this was in the first year of our marriage.
Though you followed rabbit trails
There were bushes, there were brambles
Growing hanging over, where warm creatures
Laughed and spied
Not so simple, you thought, but you must know
The horizon, the hills, the maybe storm
And that was at the end of
The second year of our marriage
And then your eyes grew watchful, wake
And the underbrush, the trees that hid
What you should know, after, just after
The time you sat on the open hill
O, but you could not find, you could not
Your way, and while you tried, you knew, you did
Of eyes that watched
And then you turned
And then you stopped
From in the dark of forest
Were eyes
My eyes
A wink
Ah!
I had you!
The Reason Why
(Love sometimes waits )
He always wondered why. Looking into obsidian
Eyes did not answer, though he certainly
Remained grateful for the
Oblivion I granted when the grandfather
North wind shook his Catholic soul some nights.
Ferociously we followed purple horizons
Every buffalo run taking us further west
And those days I loved more than him
The first years. Yet the
Heart of woman has no real way to
End and finally along the
Red River Valley I took his
Smile into my woodland woman soul.
The Church
(The first church comes to the Red River Community)
I told the kids that surely
They built the new church because
They could not find their God
And
That they built it on a hill
So they could be the first to see God coming
Striding, I suppose, proudly
Between the cart tracks
And out of the poplar bushes
I said they built it solidly
To keep out the manitous
And to say this small patch of
Endless steppe will have no spirits
Till God comes.
The young priest, half his fingers lost to frostbite
Prays in the easy morning
But when the kids put the prairies at their backs
- That monstrous sky, the endless wind -
And opened the door
There was only a bent man
Mumbling, trying not to tell God
To hurry up just a bit.
A Remarriage
(Heron Feathers signs on to Jean’s faith.)
Jean insisted we get married in the new church
Fine, I thought, better that his God be on our side
Just in case.
How can one have too many Gods?
I told the priest he had a face like
A moose’s afterbirth
But it was in Cree, and quiet so he thought
I was saying “I do.”
Jean nearly choked, but
I figured if Jesus was any good He’d have seen us
Married by the lake two years before.
I’ve often wondered since if Jesus
Is a lonesome spirit that wanders around
The insides of churches hoping
Someone will come visit
Occasionally
And just how much Cree He knows.
Part 6: The Red River Valley
Lollie drives south to Notre Dame du Portage, a c
ommunity along the Red River Valley in Manitoba. She likes what she sees of the prairies. Looking for Métis, Lollie meets Lucy Bonneau and Lucy’s brother George, and learns of the bitterness of the Métis. Nonetheless, she finds the beginnings of a sense of community there.
Precipice
(The vast and tumbling prairie sky awes Lollie)
In the stockyards of heart
In a night prairie rain
Are all the good-byes of a lifetime
Are all the mornings of years
The drops on my glasses
Make a carnival of the streetlights
I become the wind in the wheatfields
Rider of the western stars
In the glass vaults of possibility
In the fragile winds of memory
My brain links vertical rock to horizon
In the rhythm of animate breathing
I stand transfixed by falling water
Don’t blame me for seeing
Further than I’ve ever seen
In the tumult of prairie sky
I find the precipice of my being
The Transformation
(Just an observation in a highway diner)
There's a warm wind through the poplars
The cashier exists only in her own mind
18-wheelers grind into the parking lot
In a flatulence of tired hissing.
This truck stop's
On the border of the prairie
Somebody's heart is singing
Outside this cafeteria
In the morning light
A child leads two adults in
They're tired
Probably drove all night
From Thunder Bay
Faces expressionless as
Cheyenne at breakfast
Howdy Toronto people
Just out of the woods
And you're starting to look
Like the natives.
Not Far Enough
(Lollie stops in at a small town along the Red River)
“Long way from Toronto,” I said
Watching the two drunks
In the doorway
“Not far enough,” he said
Handing me a plate of fries
“Not nearly far enough.”
“Long time since the buffalo,” I said
Watching the man parking a pickup
“Not long enough,” he said
Snaffling the vinegar from the next table for me
“Not nearly long enough.”
Rivers
(Looking at the Red River in the moonlight)
Red River flows like gold
Under a midnight moon
From Indian lands
Through Métis lands
To white man’s land
This is not geography
It is history
All the years the drums of woman hearts
Impelled a more living red river
In Indian tipis
In Métis shacks
Among white men’s cruel cities
This is not biology
This is the warmth of woman’s body.
Shopworn
(Lollie’s wonderful quest continues)
It rained at dawn, the day
Edging in slowly like a bag lady
Dragging shopworn clothes.
I hunched over an arborite table
At Whiteman’s Motel
Listening to tractor-trailers rampage
Along the highway, spitting water like
Mad robotic hippopotami.
Forty gazillion trees
And I’m stuck with imitation wood.
The waitress looked like me
A thousand years old
Give or take a week
So I asked her,
“Where do I find some Métis?”
Startled. “Not me. Not here.”
A long pause. Two old people put off
Their Winnebego world for another
Bowl of cornflakes.
“Down the highway a mile.
Turn left. Ask for Lucy
At the Quick Stop.”
Then embarrassed, she left to check
The cornflakes couple
Leaving me watching puddles
On the pavement, and
Playing with a small white feather.
I Guess I’m a Métis
(Lollie meets Lucy)
“I guess I’m a Métis ,” I said
Trying to dance around the subject a bit.
“My grandmother...”
She silenced me with a raised hand
Put her fingers on my forehead
“Yup,” she said, “you sure are. I can feel it.
It’s strong, like the movement of Mother Earth.
Hang loose, babe, we’ll find you
A plug of bannock and sell you a sash
But you’ll have to leave tobacco
At the foot of a cross, then
Baptize a moose.”
“Been there,” I said, “Done it.
Didn’t get the T-shirt, though. Say
Any more Métis around, or are we
The only two left in this province?”
“You’re a bear for punishment,” she sighed
“There’s a Métis band playing tonight at the Legion.
You can buy me a beer.”
Then she hugged me.
Fiddlesticks
(Lollie at the Legion hall by the Red River)
I was a clarinet
At the corner of Bay and Dundas
Playing for charity coins
Now I believe I’m a violin
In an old prairie hall
I am happy to be sitting in a corner
Local women watching me
Cautiously
My ancestor, I wanted to say
Lived on this land
Watched the sunsets
Heard the fiddles
Now you’re stuck with me
In this hall, in the rain
Late in September.
Second Sight
(Lollie thinks about her lost marriage)
If he could see me, now
Dancing in this native hall
I don’t think he saw me
For years before he left.
Actually, I like to think
He never did.
I know he’d wonder who this woman is
And what tiger created her
Burning bright.
To Birches
(Lollie sort of takes to being part of a group for a change.)
Next life
I would be a tree.
Not the open-field oak
Not the solitary pine:
I would be a birch
One among many
Birches grow after fires
I would grow
After this fire
Beside the black stumps
When the woods are gold
And alive
With the rustling of squirrels
My one white line
Leaning down the slope a bit
Tracing the edge
Of happiness
Taking a Trip to the Past
(Lucy disapproves of Lollie’s mucking with the past)
“Bad disease,” she told me
“You walk around
With your head facing back
Do that, you’ll trip
Over the future.
Let There Be Pencil
(Perhaps she’s not as naive as I thought she was.)
Lucy read my poems, twice.
She nodded and we walked
To a graveyard
The stones were warm in the late summer sun
The river far away, the big steeple
Very near
It’s okay;
I was Catholic, once
“Cree,” she said, showing me
An ivy branch carved into an old stone.
/> I sat on it and watched the river.
“This one died at thirty-three,” Lucy noted
With four of her kids next to her.
How does your Heron Feathers do so well?”
I kept my back to the Church.
“Because I made her better.
Oh, I was going to give her a bit of tragedy
But
I guess I lost my pencil about then.
The sunshine felt good and I could see that
The river would roll on, one way or another
Till God finishes Her book
Or, if we’re lucky
Loses Her pencil.
If There Were No Death
(Dream on, but dream quickly)
If there were no death
I would fill the churches
With homeless people
And teach them bawdy songs
If there were no death
I would grow cabbages
In old churchyards
Anoint them as they grow
Put crowns on their heads
If there were no death
I would spit in God’s eye.
I would live long enough
To dream a good universe
Words
(Lollie, at Lucy’s urging, visits the local church. Once inside, our heroine discovers she’s losing faith in words. A bad sign for a would-be poet.)
Across the skies of doom and dawn
The angels vend their wares
Across the skies of doom and dawn
The people buy
And all the angels sell are words
Same as I
Same as I
Across the lands of seas and sands
The prophets dance and sing
Across the lands of seas and sands
The people listen, carefully
And all the prophets sell are words
Same as I
Same as I
When God comes at last
You will know
You will know this sign
There will be
(Thankfully)
There will be
(Gratefully)
No words.
Reaching for Heaven
(You can take the girl out of the church, but it’s a bit tricky getting the church out of the girl.)
How far into the darkness can you go
And still come running
Towards a candle
Reaching for heaven,
The long arm of Jesus
Or at least
One warm hand in a church
Empty but for bats
And you are inspired to applaud
The shadows?
People should not have a childhood
Until they are old enough
To protect themselves
And to tell
Fact from God’s
Mafioso protection racket.
Jesus forgive me, I have sunned.
She’s determined to believe
(Lollie notices that most of the people in the church are women.)
Mop and broom were all that God
Ever gave to Eve
But she left that garden trapped in life
Still wanting to believe
Running through the hills, she
Tried for bone on bone
But reaching for His turning eye
She found herself alone
From the bucket that she bore
The serpent tried to say
That tears and duty were all she'd have
Throughout her mortal stay
Later in the day, she
Tried for heart and heart, but
"You are woman," the serpent said
You'll always be apart"
Mop and broom were all that God
Ever gave to Eve
But in some prairie parish church
She’s determined to believe.
When They Hanged Him