Skip to main content

Faraway But Not Forgotten

 

Faraway But Not Forgotten

Waves lap the beach
in endless cadence
even now,
ascending the beach
falling back.
Leaving the sand glistening
under sun and star.

Cold water on your feet
its gripping froth and pulsing splash
How could the world so timeless
change so fast?

Wrenched
from your lifelong home,
on Gichi agaaming.
.

The coolness of nibi
on your ankles
in your mind,
in your heart,

just yesterday


Stiff shoes,
cut hair, silenced words,
And fear

today

faraway from home.

 

 

This is a poem about how it may have been like for any imprisoned youth from Lake Superior country suddenly swept into the boarding school system. As a non-Native, I don't presume to intimately know their pain. It is only as a human being I know the inspiration Gichi agaaming provides in such short meeting when one is open to its earthly presence.

Comments


Mark Turcotte was raised on North Dakota's Turtle Mountain Chippewa Reservation, and he has this poem about his experience as a child...

Flies Buzzing
By Mark Turcotte

somewhere in america, in a certain state of grace . . .
Patti Smith

As a child I danced
to the heartful, savage
rhythm
of the Native, the
American Indian,
in the Turtle Mountains,
in the Round Hall,
in the greasy light of
kerosene lamps.

As a child I danced
among the long, jangle legs of
the men, down
beside the whispering moccasin women,
in close circles
around the Old Ones,
who sat at the drum,
their heads tossed, backs arched
in ancient prayer.

As a child I danced away from the fist,
I danced toward the rhythms of life,
I danced into dreams, into
the sound of flies buzzing.
A deer advancing but clinging to the forest wall,
the old red woman rocking in her tattered shawl,
the young women bent, breasts
drooping to the mouths of their young, the heat
hanging heavy on the tips of our tongues,
until the Sun
burned the sky black, the moon
made us silvery blue and
all of the night sounds, all of the night sounds

folded together with the buzzing
still in our heads,
becoming a chant of ghosts,
of Crazy Horse and Wovoka
and all the Endless Others,
snaking through the weaving through the trees
like beams of ribbons of light,
singing, we shall live again we shall live,

until the Sun and the Sun and the Sun and I
awaken,
still a child, still dancing
toward the rhythm of life.



Popular posts from this blog

A Memorial to Jerry Solom August 24, 1945 -- July 23, 2019 No. 2

               Jerry Solom, August 24, 1945 -- July 23, 2019 This is a random image memorial post about my late friend, who died a year ago. I wrote a memoir/tribute to him in the Wannaskan Almanac on July 23, 2020. Here's the link to that: http://wannaskanalmanac.blogspot.com/2020/07/thursday-july-23-2020.html Me and Jerry with Marion in background in Stonington, Maine in 2015 prior to setting sail to Hull, MA. This is an excerpt from the story  "A Louisiana Ruse" by Steven G. Reynolds Published in 2000 in THE RAVEN: Northwest Minnesota's Original Art, History & Humor Journal      This describes the end of a 43-hour bus ride we took from Fargo, North Dakota to Slidell, Louisiana, where Jerry's boat was in dock prior to his voyage to Norway in 2000. I was there as part of the maintenance crew, accompanying Jerry, his son Terry Solom of Minneapolis, and their fr...

Mac Furlong: Real Hunter

   This last Tuesday, October 1st, in Reed River, Sven saw Mac Furlong hurrying down Main Street on his way to sign up for the Big Buck Contest at Normies On Main . Mac was wearing his Reed River Bank clothes so Sven didn’t recognize him right off, Mac walking so serious like, but Sven ought to have known that about this time of year all the local deer hunters are getting real anxious. Beginning soon after the Roseau County Fair in July, hunter types begin walking about the outdoors sports departments in their local hardware stores and sporting goods shops salivating over the latest hunting gear, wearing at least one parcel of florescent orange on their person as if to let the ordinary public know that, they, in fact, are real hunters of a serious nature, although temperatures are yet in the eighties. “See here, my florescent orange insulated cap with earflaps?” “Lo and behold, my florescent-orange camo jacket with elbow padding and several important pockets?” “Check o...

The Chicken Coop Revisited

 “Just  of Scientific Mind: The Chicken Coop Revisited.” by Steven G. Reynolds Gramma Eff was not deaf, not dumb, nor was she blind. She was not daft this Gramma Eff, just of scientific mind. She wore knee boots, a long white coat, goggles, special gloves, and entered in, a study of, chickens, and their loves. “Chickens, and their loves?” you ask, incredulously, with one raised brow, as if of what she studied hence made a mockery of you now. Gramma kept her chickens clean and altho you might think it mean she washed their feet, their beak, their bod --the neighbors thought it very odd. That no one out should enter in Gramma’s little chicken pen For Gramma too, removed her clothes her boots, her coat, her goggles--those gloves, that Gramma always wore whenever she opened that very door of all her chicken coops there we’ve learned strangers there, their presence spurned Gramma found these chickens smart, they liked color, music, art. Gramma learned their innate needs went far b...