Runaway Dreams

FICTION

Keeper'n Me
(1994)

A Quality of Light
(1997)

Dream Wheels
(2006)

Ragged Company
(2008)

NON-FICTION

The Terrible Summer
(1997)

For Joshua: An Ojibway Father

Teaches His Son
(2002)

One Native Life
(2008)

One Story, One Song
(2011)

RUNAWAY DREAMS

Copyright © 2011 Richard Wagamese

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without prior
written permission of the publisher, or, in Canada, in the case of photocopying
or other reprographic copying, a licence from Access Copyright (Canadian
Copyright Licensing Agency).

RONSDALE PRESS

3350 West 21st Avenue

Vancouver, B. C., Canada V6S 1G7

www.ronsdalepress.com

Typesetting: Julie Cochrane, in New Baskerville 11 pt on 13.5

Cover Design: Julie Cochrane

Paper: Ancient Forest Friendly Silva — FSC certified with 100%

post-consumer waste, totally chlorine-free and acid-free

Ronsdale Press wishes to thank the following for their support of its
publishing program: the Canada Council for the Arts, the Government of Canada
through the Canada Book Fund, and the Province of British Columbia through the
Book Publishing Tax Credit Program and the British Columbia Arts Council.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Wagamese, Richard

Runaway dreams / Richard Wagamese.

Poems.

Issued also in electronic format.

ISBN 978-1-55380-129-0

I. Title.

PS8595. A363R86 2011 C811'.54 C2011-903010-1

One day in the early 1980s I showed some very bad poetry to the
writer-in-residence at the Regina Public Library. I wasn't a poet. I just
carried a lot of unhealed hurt and melancholy. But she helped me see where my
writing could be stronger and in the end, wrote a blurb at the bottom of one of
my handwritten pages, “Richard, you're going to do it!” So this first collection
came about, almost thirty years later, because of Lorna Crozier, a great and
wonderful poet. Thank you.

My wife Debra Powell makes everyday poetry. She offers me, every day, examples
of a heart at work creating empowering and healing energy. I am always floored
by that, rendered speechless, inarticulate and I can only stand in her light and
be made more.

There are a host of friends to thank for making this possible: Pam and Bob Lee,
Ron and Wanda Tronson, Ron and Jennifer Saint-Marie, Irene and Jon Buckle, Nancy
and Peter Mutrie, Lee and June Emery, Tacey Ruffner, Kent Simmonds, Janet
Whitehead, Cheryl Robertson, Dawne Taylor, Sarah and Byron Steele, Doug Perry,
Tantoo Cardinal, Shelagh Rogers, Joseph Boyden, all the folks at Ronsdale, my
agents John Pearce and Chris Casuccio.

Thanks also to my students in Writing 314 at the University of Victoria, and to
Janet Marie (January) Rogers, who asked me one day if I had any poems — as it
turns out I had a few of them.

smoke tendrils roll upward

outward onward beyond

this abalone bowl bringing

the ancient ones

to stand at your shoulder

as the eagle feather fan

brushes smudge over the heart

and mind and spirit

making you a circle

containing everything

and nothing

at the same time

I can live like this

this being

blessed and blessing

in the same motion

the sacred medicines smoulder

drums

eagle cries

life

everything I hear

loon call wobbles over wind

eased through the gap between mountains

the lake set down aglitter

like a bowl of quartz winking

in the last frail light of sun

pushing colours around the sky

to sit here is to see this country

the way a blind man sees

the feeling of it all

pushed up hard against you

insistent as a child's hand

tugging at your sleeve

the Old Ones say

that everything is energy

and we're part of it

whether we know it or not

in the sky are pieces of me

we are the grass

alive with dancing

we are stone

vigilant and strong

we are birds

ancient with singing

the flesh of us

hand in hand, you and I

the whole wide world