the epistemology of thread and beads

 

 

 

and with second sight, she pushes                

sitting close to light
falling through a window
glancing down a needle
along a thread
to the centre
of a bright bead
is her belief
in petal, stem and leaf

she directs a long thin needle
picks one tiny seed
bead, after seed
bead, after seed
from a saucer
until she has drawn a long white string with
                                                                         her fingers

at the end of a needle
her fingers, nudge their seeds side by side
looping their weight into a petal
laid flat against the fabric nap
each seed pressed
against the cloth by the thumb and forefinger of her left hand
while thumb and forefinger of her right
plumb the unseen side of the fabric with
another needle and thread, and
with second sight, she pushes
the needle and thread up precisely
where her eye wants to meet it
on the surface of the fabric

then down
between each bead
by seed bead
seed

over and over
repeated
this gesture petal
takes patient shape

 

o

 

The bead’s colour makes no sound
but it is cranberry, moss, and fireweed
it is also wolf willow, sap and sawdust
as well as Chickadee, Magpie and jack-rabbit

a bead is not simply dark blue
but Saskatoon blue

it’s not merely black,
but beaver head black

and it’s not just a seed bead
it’s a number # 11 pearlized bead
or a number #10 2-cut glass bead
or a number #10 French white heart

 

o

 

the fabric weightless
supple through her lissome fingers
the waxed thread yielding
and the bright beads
obedient as good children
lining up in straight rows
inside the white outline
of a petal

but as she shifts
to light
falling on her beadwork
her thoughts turn to stem
how it attaches
to petal and leaf

slim stem
blood line to root
and back to leaf

and she the link
like stem
from rich root
to sprouting leaf
her children

she, this link
holds
each beadberry
a thought
each beadberry
a word in prayer

for her son
for her daughter
for her grandchild

 

o

 

she considers blue beads as holding a piece of the sky
reflected in berries
her same fingers gather Saskatoons draping from branches bent blue with fruit
and releases them to the lard pail tied to her waist
their dropping, the sound of small drumming in the pail
her same fingers scoop Saskatoons, the fruit of feasts
from a bowl in the sweat
that place of gathering self
and others back to womb
that bulb of life
in her mother

each bead a birth, she senses
as light grows faint as thread

each bead a birth, she sees
her eyesight fine as thread

 

each bead a birth, she listens
each bead sewn down, a word                        in prayer

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                 Marilyn Dumont











 

riding the earth

She said she felt the earth move again.
I never knew whether she meant she felt a tremor
or whether it was the rotation of the earth.
I like to think she felt the rotation, because anyone can feel a tremor.

And when she felt this she could see herself
standing on the earth’s surface.

 Her thick wide feet solidly planted, toes digging in.
Her visualization so strong she almost feels her body arch against
the centrifugal force of the rotation.
She sees herself with her long hair floating,
floating in the atmosphere of stardust.
She rides her planet the way a child rides a toy.
Her company is the boy who takes the sun on its daily journey,
and the man in the moon smiles as she passes by.



                            Ofelia Zepeda









.....

tending to the core

 

 

 

Perhaps the World Ends Here                            

 

The world begins at a kitchen table.
 No matter what, we must eat
                                   to live.

The gifts of earth are brought and prepared,
                  set on the table.
                 So it has been since creation, and it will go on.

We chase chickens or dogs away from it.
               Babies teethe at the corners.
                               They scrape their knees under it.

It is here that children are given instructions on what it means to be human.
                             We make men at it, we make women.

At this table we gossip,
              recall enemies and the ghosts of lovers.

Our dreams drink coffee with us as they put their arms around our children.
          They laugh with us at our poor falling-down selves
                     and as we put ourselves back together once again at the table.

This table has been a house in the rain,
                                  an umbrella in the sun.
 
Wars have begun and ended at this table.
                 It is a place to hide in the shadow of terror.
                        A place to celebrate the terrible victory.

We have given birth on this table, 
            and have prepared our parents for burial here.
At this table we sing with joy, with sorrow.

We pray of suffering and remorse. We give thanks.
         Perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table,
           while we are laughing and crying,
                                  eating of the last sweet bite.




                                                     Joy Harjo











.....

hard rain's a gonna fall

         Noah                                                           






 He has a talent for uneasiness,
drinks too much coffee, chooses to rehearse
the nag and riddle of the universe;
he scans the clearest sky for cumulus
to cloud the heart; declares, in self-embrace,
the arch-perfectionist a candidate for grace.

How can he sit at table, and delight
in cream and figs, and smile? He glumly goes
against the bright ideal of repose,
the lesser peace of coasting in the light,
like Noah in his arcane discipline
troubling wife and neighbour with his prophetic din.

Though he may see what others do not see,
poetry’s perception without power;
yet he abandons the sufficient hour
of milk and bread and apples from the tree
and schemes the hour the mind will not defraud
as he saws and he hammers, one eye on his god.

He salts the distant and unplundered sea,
forgets the portrait on the mantlepiece,
the oaken trestle and the bolster-fleece
and all heroic domesticity.
He sips his wine and spits his olive pips,
anticipates the pleasures of apocalypse.

And is it all a figment of the blood —
this famished, unameliorable mind,
this dream-demented, rhyme-encrusted, blind
imagination calling down a flood?
He stacks his eclogues in unpublished heaps,
diviner of a world in which the dreamer reaps.

So let him itch and twitch, a weatherfrog,
and watch his fingers stain with nicotine.
The nervous poet contemplates a green
Sahara, and, when all is night and fog,
the greater peace of sensing in the dark
miraculous mountains for his uncompassed ark.




                     David Solway






.

life and grit

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

         MONTANA PASTORAL                                            

 

 

 

 

 

I am no shepherd of a child’s surmises.

I have seen fear where the coiled serpent rises,

Thirst where the grasses burn in early May

And thistle, mustard, and the wild oat stay.

There is dust in this air. I saw in the heat

Grasshoppers busy in the threshing wheat.

So to this hour. Through the warm dusk I drove

To blizzards sifting on the hissing stove,

And found no images of pastoral will,

But fear, thirst, hunger, and this huddled chill.

 

 

 

 

                       J V Cunningham

......

3 Poems of the metis alive

          PIECES                                                                                                       

we fit
like small
puzzle pieces
tiny things who
together
create a whole
like two
pieces of shard glass
whose seams seem
to fuse
together
and held there
with strong hands
look like
they were never broken








BREATHE                                                                                             



we breathe fresh
air into our suffocated
mouths and speak
such long Anishnaabe
words we trace
across our flesh
our sore skins stretch
to their edges
our lips parch raw but
we keep kissing anyway
smooth Anishnaabe
words move in
and out of time
waft through
our bodies as sure as
smoke
every word beautiful
when it falls off
your lips
when I catch it
with my tongue
when I kiss you so long
I think your taste
will never leave
my mouth

 



2.

your tongue digs
new passages
between
my lips
carves circles
on the roof of my mouth
hieroglyphics for historians
to find
you draw out
each sound
one
by one
each letter hinges
between
our breath







MADWEBAGAASIN                                                                                           

silky Anishnaabe
words that read
like poems
the sound of your fingers through my hair
madwebagaasin
the same word as
the sound of wind through the trees
madwebagaasin
my favourite poems
are always the ones
I don’t fully
understand




                   Katharena Vermette












......