Gentlewoman (Listening to the grandmothers: a part at the end)

Gentlewoman you define my hand

I heard you taste of colors last spotted on a train before the great war - 

Let's pretend we're proper ladies kept under watchful eyes,

"Was it always done in summer?  We must do the same again."

I don't like the tenor.

"You Shakespeare or just a hack?"

We pretend prefect manners while the rot stains spread down the hallways.

"LOOK more real - less doll like."

Why does she cut her roast on the face of the queen?

-Hands down -

There will be enough!

You can use each moment to thread your tendons.

I still sometime count those tiles in my dreams.

That becomes your core - your home

You have forever in that breathe right there.

Plunder it like summer's faithful treasures.

Woven streams of women

All with gentle spirits

"Who comes with you today?"

- ALL WE REPLY - 

We have come here together.

Ready to questions the winds and waters.

Holding meetings with our future.

We invented new words

We stretched the sky.

Now a montage

Crescendo big - there is no shame here.

We find a cure.

- yes.  you are made of wonder -

that's simple - more forthcoming

You are alive

made of things so special

- yes, even you - cue laugh track 

So slow down - the race, the place, the flicker of the tv

Find the story

Make a joke

Share a wonder

and there you're flying.

It's all so natural

water over rock

breathe in streams of lives and times

you are the spaces and silences matter too.

You are the whole box of crayons

- you know their secrets -

You write in glitter

Me too - just backwards/upside down/in a tense not yet invented

"Two stoves?"

I ask myself quite often.

I know the answer, just liked the thrill

You go on home now

soft arms embrace you

"You hear each tone like light on the back of your garden than now entertains such a beauty."

Swallow all the lessons

don't fear the shadows

hold up your daughters

teach all your sons

so their might yet be forests

where bare spots once scarred our skins

Hold the cedar

watch the water

know your streets

you are a wonder to this world

we are all together linked

making patterns so divine

- breathe in wonder - 

release each everything you tortured in mad fury

out across the fabric that you wove

as you take your share from others

balancing a moment that is you and yours.

****

Hibernation 2021 Pehiw

Métis Fear 388

 

Métis Fear 388: Brother Crow might be unwilling to share his treasures.

Finding the patterns (Listening to the grandmothers: a part not the first)

What if each poem forgot it's ending?

You see the ledge but cannot stop?

What if I forgot to ask the questions?

Accidentally tearing the sky asunder?

What if there is not enough time to feel everything?

What if I am half and half and half again?

What if I can never understand the data that makes up clouds and waves and people?

"You are enough.  You are enough"

What if I cannot understand the patterns?

The dancers?

The ancestors?

n = "don't forget me"

WE = (you, me, all)

∑(0-∞) n *(WE) = art

Paintings like sonatas,

a gallery of portraits try to inhabit their bodies

Do we need these kings and leaders and businessmen?

Do we eat their stories?

Each a horrible dish only ruined more by boredom.

These men - "Hey, she's got that tattoo.  The one they mark on real twisted people."

Or can you feel the heft of circle?

I tell you truth now

"Please Mr Questions.  It is time to stop blaming us for questions when your answers run rancid."

Then the Grandmothers intervene

"We found the spaces of exquisite delights -

We will supp here on abundance-

We will hold each other up

We will swell our voices

There will be no shame."

Will all the questions then be answered?

Can I take a different path tomorrow?

To repeat not a crime?

We will connect and learn each story

We will see the struggles and laugh and cry - no joke - intertwined with sunshine.

We trade - we make - we open

Now you know the ending - go and make it real.

Voices winding through your person

"You are enough"

"Eating and breathing - you are a treasure wrapped up in beauty so deep it goes right to the bones."

"So beloved - that mountains cannot hold your treasures."

"Watch your hands - for they are us - we all walk together"

"Don't fear your becomings - they are all made of stars"

Not much - said no one ever!

We are all of us now transforming

Making spaces for the parts of us we fear.

Examining our tapestries of questions,

Ourselves now enough

just made of circles

the perfect pattern

now etched in whom we now become.

Hibernation 2021 - Pehiw

Métis Fear 387

 

Métis Fear 387: Capitalism has given us some strange ideas.

Fear not the planting (Listing to the grandmothers first part)

 What if our scars became songs?

The lyrics raising up civilizations?

What do you feel as the math of the universe tickles your palate?

What if the dragons and monsters,

Were really our allies, 

In a war we never even noticed?

What if the ancestors were our mirrors?

What eyes to wear to the boardroom?

An uncle or a mother who last breathed when the world was young?

Could you turn our eyes to trouble?

Like money's mighty magic

An assault upon our "WE"

The grandmothers pass behind me.

I feel each hand

"Fear not the planting for the seeds know to grow."

Then, "The chaos grows the future from hand to hand we share the fires."

I see them burning

There is beauty infinite in the moment.

"Plant your feet firm.  Reach down past grandfathers of stone, 

past stories so cobwebbed they are but a breathe."

You know the rest - no need to go on reading.

"Put down the shame.  Weave the voices together.  Each one is a gift."

Hibernation 2021, Pehiw

Métis Fear 386

 

Métis Fear 386: my animal relations are getting into problems I don't have the math to understand.

Honoring our Circles

This is a poem I have been working on while we find the children.  EM

 

Honoring our Circles

 

We are taking back the names

Taking back the places

Taking back the lies

You like to eat like candy

 

You shame us when our much

Is much to much to handle

The same as you do when our little is much “too small”

You offer a syrupy call

“Assimilate”

“It is easy”

“These ways are much superior”

“You already speak our language”

 

But my body holds the memories

The harm and hopes and medicines

My body stores the seeds –

Knows the path to ceremony and the sacred

Knows the guides on both sides of the sky

 

So we are taking back the names

Taking back the places

Taking back the secrets used to justify the harm

 

We are remembering our ancestors

Inviting them to meetings

Listening to their wisdom

Caring for the wounded

Listening in our dreams

 

We are trying out forbidden words

Tasting them on our tongues

While you try to quantify the tortures

Do you listen to the stories?

Of rapes and missing family?

Of family who were …?

A noble nun?

Or a woman burning infants in a furnace?

What is the “dark moods” she mentions in her letters?

 

And when will we talk about bribes and intimidations?

Slavery in these “Schools”?

Wars fought on the surpluses of children?

Of the sex and money made for white men

Whose children now live in mansions

And influence us on media?

 

So we are taking back the names

Taking back the places

Listing to the Grandmothers

Who help us see the way

 

We are taking back the places

Where you threw us

Into graves you hoped would hold us

Our children given shovels

Taught to dig their own dirt beds

So you could disappear your “problems”

These people too pure/too whore

We weren’t trouble

Till you turned us into outlaws to keep our songs alive

 

So we are pulling back the curtains

On the drawing rooms your treasured

Showing all the decay your pretend is not there

We are imagining some futures

Not made outta money

Investing in our spirits

Turning our tongues to their roots

 

But our bodies carry stories

Some tattooed deep

Some clear upon our faces

Some still in motion

Some from lands left behind

We join this journey

Each from where we were

Each to plant a seed

To grow a better future

Where we don’t measure people with money

And where we remember that giving is a gift

 

Come join the circle

There is space to do the work

Songs to keep you strong

Peoples to hold you up as the curtains come down

Matriarchs of fire who can grant and take names

And guide you round the circle back to the beginning

Which is where we will be living

Feeling out our names

Visiting our places

Speaking our truths

And honouring our circles

Pehiw 2021 and 2022

July 2021 and Jan 2022

Elizabeth MacDonald, Métis (she/her)