Harvest Moon

A 1000 years ago
We journeyed
Thin glass
A temporal barrier to our love affair.

We watched
The landscape
Breathe seasons

Tacky try buildings
- Maybe they have settled now –

They tried
Roofs of green
Libraries of pine
Dewy Decimal sorrows
Overcome
By parking ass
And touching
Each bound world
To know their truths

If I had more skin
I would
Still be full up.

A lot of truths
Grew
As we built our maps to “Savage degeneracies”
AKA – we don’t kill our kids for market!
That’s a moniker worn with pride.

To all my boys
To chicken dinners*
Even you spy
To you – body make crime
To you - who did not know the boat sinks
To you - who were big when I was small

To you - last name backwards
Wherever Friday morning holds you
Ni-nanaskomowin

Pehiw Wandering 2022

* Economist potlocks when everyone brings what was on sale that week.

I extrapolate the harm

Patterns
I extrapolate the harm
My data
Refined
Longitudinal
The model
A beauty
Rivaling Helen of Troy?
Is a demi-Helen
The new math we need?*

What is the measure of harm?
You know your units
Shame
Paths untried
Eyes not met

When do I become complicit?
When I did math with hope?

You wondered why more Indigenous folk
Don’t do higher level academy MATH

Cause they know maths/numbers/sacred geometries
You don’t know exist.
Who needs who?

And cause
We got babies to feed
Dying to care for
Ceremony to do –
Sacred math
Circle
Rocks in small hands
In those generations
Sunk deep in bones.

Pehiw Wandering 2022

* 1986 McCloskey, D.N. The Rhetoric of Economics, University of Wisconsin Press; 2nd ed. (1998) ISBN 0-299-15814-4 (First ed. written as Donald McCloskey) 2nd ed. preview.

Warriors of Soil

You share
Tired
So many battles
So many more to come
But you were planting seeds
Food our kids will consume
Nurturing vines that map the struggle
Your art
Messages to ponder
To inspire

Maybe we are Moses
To never enter the promised land
But they carry your line
Your stories
Your truths

For all the labels
Given in fear
Consider this one
You are enough
You are possibility
You are becoming
You are a warrior of soil.

Pehiw Wandering 2022 for L and P

“Change the game – don’t let the game change you”

“Change the game – don’t let the game change you”
Mackelmore “Make the Money” from the album “The Heist”

Louie told us
We would rise again
Cradled by our artists
Warriors
Of paper
brush
Vibration.

So go tell our stories
“It is time”
Becoming.

Welcome
All who know their places
All who struggle
All ready to learn
All with tongues
Ready to birth new/old truths
Ready to change this game.

Pehiw Wandering 2022

Art as she lives

Do you remember,
The first time
You found
That piece
The color
The line of stone
That wonder who survived
So much to be there
Moments away from you?

Did you see the babies grow still 

Awed by Ron Mueck*
The very face if their god?

Did you ever take a corner
To on-the-fly edit the exploits of Freida and Diego?

I still remember you Miro
This human got NO BIRDS!

A lullaby of bitter sweet palimpsests
Under church words
An ancient text
Until then unknown.

At bed we agreed – Tut – best king ever.
As we read every book
Child to adult
“Don’t put the death mask of King Tut on your sister –
You know it makes her cry.”

Barbie
Wife to Osiris
Who made worshipers
Wait
Until he finished the laundry.

They put my beauty
Into storage
That face of anguish
Haunts me still
Arms stubs
Chipped marble.

Bring in the Aunties!
To feed him
To love him
Seeds planted
“That’s Diego but not the real one”

Pehiw Wandering 2022

* Awed by Ron Mueck

Not undone

Not undone
The truth has deep roots
Weave any frayed threads
Into your becoming
Into your circles
Into your
                Sore
                            Battered

                                            Tired places

Reinforce with
                Leaves
                            Rivers
                                            Mountains

There is space
For every part of you
Your/my gifts
Will let us water deeply
Harvest the bounty
Planted in hope
For us
By those voices absent
When “value” assigned
Given NULL/NA/--/ERROR

Let’s dream
Let the youth come
Let’s feast
FOR WE ARE NOT UNDONE
We are a new thing

Pehiw Wandering 2022

To you who feed us

Thank you
To all of you who feed me
Coffees in hand
As we dream (im)possible things
I hope one day
Each of you see
You were fueling
So many firsts
So many hard conversations.
Your food a benediction
As we grow
And re-re-remember
As we prepare to go home.

I see you
Woven deep
Into our sashes
Our blankets
Our minds.

You have fueled budgets
And innovations
And trusts
You feed our Elders
You feed our futures
Those people
We prepare
A journey to far for one generation.
So many firsts
So many moments
I never thought to see
So many treasures
I never could imagined
So many paths opening,

So know
You are in every circle
In every doughnut eaten for a past one
In everything we right/write
Ninanaskomowin (A thank you in ceremony)

I am honoured to share this journey with you.

Pehiw Wandering 2022