Skip to main content

Note from November 30, 2002

  

Perhaps shadows from tallow candles

darted against lodge walls

and smokehole peaks like does the 

candle flame on this table flickers

in time to the accentuated breaths of 

the flute player ...

Perhaps these Hidatsa-Mandan strains 

have been heard upon this very land

two hundred years ago,

perhaps a thousand,

and the land needs to hear it again.

Comments

I just did a search, and your blog is the only place it appears on the WWW.

Amazing writing!
You have the poet's touch which WC's search verifies.
The poem is elegant, poignant and both despair and hopeful joy.
Thank you for bringing this work out of candlelight and into sunshine.
WannaskaWriter said…
Thanks you two. They are just a few lines I rediscovered in papers I am going through, and thought to publish in my blog here than to rebury them possibly forever.

Popular posts from this blog

Winter Returns Along Mikinaak Creek February 8-9th, 2024

  This is the first channel wide moving water I've seen since the spring of 2023 --and it's in February!       On maps, the creek (or ‘crick' depending on your dialect) is spelled ‘Mickinock’ for the Anishinaabe man who lived at the Indian camp at Ross, but had seasonal camps around Wannaska and other places. The Euro-American immigrants who homesteaded here in Roseau County called him ‘Chief,’ but he may have been just a spokesperson who knew enough English to get things done peacefully and simultaneously meet the needs of his people; the word, ‘chief' was often used in derision of any Indigenous male adult.      I spell Mikinaak the Ojibwe way, in a gesture of respect; what the Dakota, who were here before the Anishinaabeg/Chippewa, called this place, this body of moving water I don’t know; just as I don’t know who came before them exactly.  I was told that one of Mikinaak's camps were here on our place in Palmville Township. Its locat...

Friends to the End: Delmer Roseen and Curtis Johnson

  Delmer and Curtis: Friends to the End      From where he was buried on Saturday April 11th, 1992, the tin roofs of his buildings could be seen through the trees. Across the fence, at the foot of his grave, were the fields he farmed. Between them, Mikinaak Creek--so much a part of Delmer Roseen’s life and sadly, his death--still winds through willow slough, over beaver dams below the Palmville Cemetery, and past his door to the South Fork of the Roseau River, only a few yards to the southeast.         Delmer lived northeast of us in Palmville Township. If I looked just right, I could see his yard light through the woods between his place and mine. Either of us could hear the soft ‘clung’ of the rope and pulley against the flag pole in the cemetery at the corner of our two farms. Red willows, popple islands, and slough grass; green mossy fence posts; the often submerged patchwork of woven wire, and the depth of water i...

1972 An August Adventure: Stormy Lake, Snake Bay, Ontario

My 1972 Toyota Land Cruiser   A life changing event. I've had asthma all my life and it limited me somewhat until 1972, when after an event on a remote Canadian lake I was rushed to Dryden Area Hospital for emergency treatment of a pneumothorax /lung collapse. Early one morning, my dad and I left Des Moines, Iowa on 1530 mile round trip fishing expedition to Stormy Lake, Ontario; stopping in Roseau, Minnesota to join six family members: My uncle  Martin and aunt Irene Davidson of Roseau, their son Jack Davidson and his 8-yr old son, Jeffrey, of Thief River Falls, Minnesota, and Jack's older brother Dean Davidson, and his 11-yr old son, Larry, of Clive, Iowa in addition to their two two vehicles, one with a boat atop it. We were pulling a one-wheeled trailer behind my brand new 1972 Toyota Land Cruiser to handle extra gear. Leaving Roseau as the last vehicle in the three car caravan, we headed off toward the...