Gathering
Taken June 21 at Two Lights Beach on our way to the Solstice Ceremony.
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Riverside Louis’ Quill Work
Riverside Louis had a grandmother. He did.
He used to sit at the crackling fire that gave light
when the sun disappeared. Then there were many
moon faces, those days, that sat around
so the fire could be reflected on them.
Louis loved how the fire made everyone beautiful.
Even him, yes, even him, with his greasy hair glossed
and his pitted skin pacified by the smoothing light.
He wished to be as beautiful as those around the fire.
He wished it so hard and he was so full of longing
that his grandmother knew and told him this story:
“Once, Louis, when everything could talk,
There was one animal more beautiful than all the others.
He was. He was so beautiful that he was afraid
to let others touch him in case his beauty rubbed off.
He was too proud, Louis. Too proud. He walked around
thinking he was pretty, knowing he was pretty, and making sure
others thought him the most ‘prettiest’. He put people off, Louis,
and so people paid him no mind and this bothered him
because he wanted to be see, just not touched.
Well, off he goes to Creator and said, “Make me more beautiful
so these other animals will be jealous but they can’t touch me.”
A sunrise, a sunset or two later, after sleeping alone
in the thorny bushes that would keep people off him
while he slept, he awaken to find he had picked up the barbs.
Now no one would touch his beauty nor will they tell him
how beautiful he is any more. You ‘gotta’ be gentle and humble
Louis and be glad for the beauty inside, or Creator will make
people look harder to see how beautiful you are.”
Riverside Louis made people look hard all his life. He was prickly
and he wetted himself down with booze until the pocks in his skin
oozed the alcohol. Mothers would guide their children away from him.
Sisters would roll up the windows in their trucks and study
the Northern Store food receipts rather than face him. Brothers
raised the palms of their hands in his face and turned their backs to him.
But a few, a few who saw something behind the prickles, looked long
at Louis and saw Wigum’s need for attention and awe.
See, even a poet, an artist, who gathers quills by flopping
wet feed sacks on the backs of the brother who will donate
quills for twisted, woven and back-stitched designs
of words of sacrifice and humility onto smoked pages.
We pick up quills and ink and work ourselves back
to the fire of the Grandmother who holds our stories
and our ability to hold ourselves to earth until she is finished
her own quillwork cover. The muzzle of the dog
who sneaks over, when she is not looking, and pokes
the quills from her work into his muzzle, is the poet
who borrows from the stories so they are never done.
Riverside Louis knew this and fire and stories well.
As long as he could hide himself in the firewater,
he would not suffer the touching and the jealousy.
Who would want to be Louis? Who would expect
much of him. He simply sits around his own fire,
watching us react to his beauty we have to look deep for.
Potential
In the heart of a chaotic garden
God has made perfection amongst the rows.
If this is so, then there is petal’d potential
for the one who plants and hoes.
This Hinterland I Offer You
This hinterland I offer you, sweet seed of my desire,
is not the heaven of the whoosh and rock,
sweet lullaby of my heart under which you nestle.
I have known you prior to your increasing curve
into my life, have fashioned you of dreams and schemes
of all that is divine and dear.
That the touch of my lips to the cowl of your crowning
I shall know you as angel with halo of my hallowed birthing
and treat you as such as only angels should know.
I can not promise the earth and it inhabitants will recognize
that you have come fresh from the breath of Creator.
My only desire is that you know His love through me.
Cupping
I break the branch that forces shade
Upon the green and growing things
In the newly seeded garden.
This shade has always been here,
Stunting the blooming
Beneath its dancing hands.
I thought to have conquered it,
Hoped it would wither and become dust,
But, no, it has simply taken root
And crawls back up into the forest,
Curl by curl it unfurls and in its quiet return
It has sprouted one leaf to cup the sun.