Paul Lake Morning
from the deck you watch over coffee as everywhere
shadow surrenders to light
there's a motion to it, a falling back
as though the world were being pushed
into daylight shapes again
the boundaries of things assuming
their more familiar proportions
so that from here you get the sense of the universe
shrugging its shoulders into wakefulness
all things together
you come here to be part of it
this ceremony of morning, this first light
they call
Beedahbun
in the Old Talk
you can feel it enter you
the light pouring into the cracks
and crevices of your being
even with your eyes closed the wash
of it like surf against your ribs and the air
crisp as icicles on your tongue
there's gentleness in this slow sure creep into being
and something in you reacts to that
needs it, wants it, dreamt it sometime
so that the sun's ebullient cascade
down the pine-pocked flank of mountain
becomes the first squawk and natter of ravens
in the high branches of fir where the wind
soughs like the exhalation of a great bear
raising her snout in salute and celebration
to this Great Mystery presenting itself again
Nindinaway-majahnee-dog
is what the Anishinabeg say
and when that language was reborn in you
that phrase more than anything adhered to your insides
all my relations
this is what you see from here
this connectedness to things, this critical joining that becomes
a revelation, a prayer and an honour song all at the same time
a blessing, really, that someone cared enough
to come and find you in your wandering
and bring you home to it, to ritual, to history
to language and the teachings you've learned to see
and hear and taste and feel and intuit in everything
this ceremony of becoming
that morning brings you to again
you become Ojibway
like the way you become a Human Being
measure by measure, step by step
on a trail blazed by the hand of grace
every awakening a reclaiming of the light
you were born to
The Canada Poem
I
Listen. Can you not hear the voices of the Old Ones talking,
speaking to you in the language you've forgotten? In your
quietest moments can you not feel the weight of an old and
wrinkled hand upon your shoulder or your brow? Listen.
Close your eyes and listen and tell me if you cannot hear the
exhalation of a collected breath from your ancestors in the
spirit world standing here beside you even now. Listen.
They are talking. They speak to you in Dene, Cree, Micmac,
Blackfoot, Ojibway and Inuktitut but they also speak
Hungarian, German, Gaelic, Portuguese, French, Mandarin
and English. The voices of the Old Ones. The ones who
made this country speak to us now because there is no colour
in the spirit world, no skin. Just as there is no time, there is
no history. There's only spirit, only energy flowing outward,
onward in a great eternal circle that includes every soul that's
ever stood upon this land, embraced this Earth, been borne
forward on this Creation and then fallen head over heels in
love with the spell of this country. Listen. They are speaking
to all of us now, telling us that we're all in this together â and
we always were. Listen. Only listen and you will hear them.
They speak in the hard bite of an Atlantic wind across Belle
Isle, in the rush of Nahanni waters, in the pastoral quiet over
Wynyard, in the waft of thermals climbing over Revelstoke
and Field to coast down and settle over Okotoks, then again
in the salt spray of Haida Gwaii, the screech of an eagle over
the wide blue eye of the lake called Great Bear and in the
crackle, swish and snap of Northern Lights you can hear in
the frigid air above Pangnirtung. They speak to us there.
Listen. Listen. There are spirit voices talking, weaving threads
of disparate stories into one great aural tapestry of talk that
will outlast us all â the story of a place called Kanata that has
come to mean “our home.”
II
sitting with Earl in the cab of his truck
the '65Â Mercury all banged to hell
from running woodlot roads and hauling
boats and motors through bogs and swamps
to landings the Ojibway said were there
and where the jack and pickerel lurked
in the depths beyond the bass at the reeds
“more'n yuh could shake a stick at,” he said
and laughed and rubbed a calloused palm
along the windshield and talked about how
“this old girl, she done seen her day but she
still got go in her by god” and laughs again
and talks about his wife and him
coming here in the late summer of 1949
fresh off failed farmland outside of Milton
and determined to find waters like those
he fished as a boy in Finland and laughs
and tells me about pike longer than his arm
pulled out of the Ruunaa Rapids
and how this country here takes him back
even the smell of it he says and that's why
they come to build a fishing lodge here
because the Nipigon River runs like the
River Lieksanjoki of his youth and “by god
we got brook trout break da goddam arm sometimes”
he tells of building the lodge on the rocks
above a wide bend in the river
and how his wife came to love the feel
of the wind on her face those nights
when the work was done and she'd sit
in the willow rocker he built her
set under the eaves on the rough-hewn deck
and sing him Finnish folk songs
while he sat drinking tea and staring
out across the sweep of land
that reminded him so much of home
until one by one the stars winked
into view and they would move into the house
to lie awake to watch the moon shadow
creep across the log walls until sleep came and swept
them both away to Kuopio and the waters
they still loved as much as these
Anna-Liisa he says quietly and rubs
at the corner of an eye before he speaks again
she passed away three years before I met him
and he talks of laying her to rest
beneath the towering pines that hung
above the cleft of pink granite where
she planted wildflowers in the cracks and crevices
and he set that old willow rocker on those rocks
so he could go out of an evening and sit
and talk to her and sing old Finnish folk songs
while he watched the sun go down
“it's her land now by god” he says
“and my land too because of where she sleeps”
and there's nothing I can say but nod and smoke
and stare at the Nipigon River rushing south
beyond the peninsula and out into
the broad purple dream of Lake Superior
we ate sardines and crackers and drank warm ale
in the cab of that beat-up truck
and he asked me questions about myself
that I didn't hold the answers to and he
would nod his head and rub the dashboard
in small gentle circles with the pad
of one finger and smile sadly
“I come here to find myself” he said
“and it was not even yet my home
and here it's been yours all along
and still we make the same journey”
he dropped me off outside of Thunder Bay
in the chill and wet of morning
handed me thirty crumpled dollars
and said “come back and work by god”
and waved and drove away for food
supplies and a host of Finnish friends
and I stood alone
on the shoulder of another deserted highway
waiting, that summer of '74, and wishing
that I might make it back someday but
both of us knowing
that I never would
III
in Shebandowan the miners drive
their Cats into town to drink
with Ojibway kids
on the run from Kaministiquia
or Shabaqua or Atitkokan
roll them cigarettes one-handed
tell them horror stories of the mines
then let them win at pool
so they can get them drunk and laugh
there's something about a D8Â Cat
that gives a man a sense of power
and maybe that's what they chase
so they don't have to think
of home and women and kids
or ordinary shit like that
they drink as they live
hard and fast, two-fisted
as if they could blow the foamy head
from all the tomorrows
and never heed the darkness
that walks with them
in the depths
instead they sit and drink and cuss
arm wrestle and brag
and leer at the Indian girls
until someone hollers “squaw”
and the fight breaks out
well, I heard all their stories
then I drank their beer for nothing
before kicking ass at pool
and thumbing out of town
with a pocketful of their money
IV
Riding out of Elkhorn with a gang of transients in the back of
a stake truck after stooking wheat for ten days in the Manitoba
heat. There's easier ways to make a buck but you take what
you can get when the Rambler Typhoon breaks down in the
middle of nowhere and the Mounties shake you awake by the
foot sleeping behind the Esso and give you the choice of “jail
or job.” Still, the food was good and when the guy beside you
asks you for a smoke you give him one because he told a real
good one about Cape Breton one night around the fire that
made you laugh like hell. The gang of you headed west.
Their names are gone but you recall the places: Come By
Chance, Sissiboo Falls, Moosehorn, Snag and Wandering
River. They were Russian, French, German, English, Inuit,
Swede and Blackfoot and everyone came with stories that
crackled with the light of the fire outside the bunk house
and there were songs sung all guttural and low while goatskins
got passed along with the last of someone's hash and you
could look up and see the moon hung like a blind man's eye
throwing everything in that prairie night into a mazy, snowy
blue that made each of those tales a portal you stepped
through as easily as breathing until the voices stilled and
the fire died and the lot of you stumbled to your bunks to
dream of better days somewhere beyond the dry rasp of wheat
and the press of heat like an iron to your back and clouds
of
chaff in your nose. You smoke and watch the land sail by and
wonder where you'll land next and someone bumps your foot
with the toe of a broken shoe and grins and you hand off the
butt and watch him lean his head back against the wooden
slat and exhale long and slow, the cloud of it vanishing back
behind the truck like dreams born somewhere you never
heard of before.
V
She kept an old and battered Bible
on the table made of packing crates
and drank Indian tea from metal cups
poured from a pot dangled
over a birch log fire
in the stone hearth that held
black and white photos of her children
and her husband all long gone
the edges scalloped, curled and yellowed
and medals from the Indian school
for penmanship and spelling
she lived in Eden Valley
in the shadows of the foothills for so long
she said, the hills became her bones
and she watched the reservation change
as the Old Ones like her died away
and the young ones drifted off
chasing city dreams and left their talk behind
but she taught me how to build a sweat
and sing an honour song to the breaking
day and to lay tobacco down when
we walked across the land to gather
the sweet grass and the sage
she taught me how to pray with
“always ask for nothing” she told me
“just give thanks for what's already here,
that's how an Indyun prays”
she told me stories
legends and amazing tales
of creatures and spirits and times before
things changed forever for the Stoney
and how the nuns at the residential schools
taught them how to scour everything
even the Indian off themselves
“then why the Bible?” I asked
and she smiled and took my hand
in both of hers like elders do
“because Jesus wept” she said
it took me years to finally get it
and when I did I looked up to the sky
and said thanks for everything that was
and is and ever would be
because Jesus wept
in gratitude for pain
and the salvation that comes
with the acceptance of it
when you learn to hold it
you can learn to let it go
it's how an Indian prays