Runaway Dreams (5 page)

from the deck you watch over coffee as everywhere

shadow surrenders to light

there's a motion to it, a falling back

as though the world were being pushed

into daylight shapes again

the boundaries of things assuming

their more familiar proportions

so that from here you get the sense of the universe

shrugging its shoulders into wakefulness

all things together

you come here to be part of it

this ceremony of morning, this first light

they call
Beedahbun
in the Old Talk

you can feel it enter you

the light pouring into the cracks

and crevices of your being

even with your eyes closed the wash

of it like surf against your ribs and the air

crisp as icicles on your tongue

there's gentleness in this slow sure creep into being

and something in you reacts to that

needs it, wants it, dreamt it sometime

so that the sun's ebullient cascade

down the pine-pocked flank of mountain

becomes the first squawk and natter of ravens

in the high branches of fir where the wind

soughs like the exhalation of a great bear

raising her snout in salute and celebration

to this Great Mystery presenting itself again

Nindinaway-majahnee-dog
is what the Anishinabeg say

and when that language was reborn in you

that phrase more than anything adhered to your insides

all my relations

this is what you see from here

this connectedness to things, this critical joining that becomes

a revelation, a prayer and an honour song all at the same time

a blessing, really, that someone cared enough

to come and find you in your wandering

and bring you home to it, to ritual, to history

to language and the teachings you've learned to see

and hear and taste and feel and intuit in everything

this ceremony of becoming

that morning brings you to again

you become Ojibway

like the way you become a Human Being

measure by measure, step by step

on a trail blazed by the hand of grace

every awakening a reclaiming of the light

you were born to

I

Listen. Can you not hear the voices of the Old Ones talking,

speaking to you in the language you've forgotten? In your

quietest moments can you not feel the weight of an old and

wrinkled hand upon your shoulder or your brow? Listen.

Close your eyes and listen and tell me if you cannot hear the

exhalation of a collected breath from your ancestors in the

spirit world standing here beside you even now. Listen.

They are talking. They speak to you in Dene, Cree, Micmac,

Blackfoot, Ojibway and Inuktitut but they also speak

Hungarian, German, Gaelic, Portuguese, French, Mandarin

and English. The voices of the Old Ones. The ones who

made this country speak to us now because there is no colour

in the spirit world, no skin. Just as there is no time, there is

no history. There's only spirit, only energy flowing outward,

onward in a great eternal circle that includes every soul that's

ever stood upon this land, embraced this Earth, been borne

forward on this Creation and then fallen head over heels in

love with the spell of this country. Listen. They are speaking

to all of us now, telling us that we're all in this together — and

we always were. Listen. Only listen and you will hear them.

They speak in the hard bite of an Atlantic wind across Belle

Isle, in the rush of Nahanni waters, in the pastoral quiet over

Wynyard, in the waft of thermals climbing over Revelstoke

and Field to coast down and settle over Okotoks, then again

in the salt spray of Haida Gwaii, the screech of an eagle over

the wide blue eye of the lake called Great Bear and in the

crackle, swish and snap of Northern Lights you can hear in

the frigid air above Pangnirtung. They speak to us there.

Listen. Listen. There are spirit voices talking, weaving threads

of disparate stories into one great aural tapestry of talk that

will outlast us all — the story of a place called Kanata that has

come to mean “our home.”

II

sitting with Earl in the cab of his truck

the '65 Mercury all banged to hell

from running woodlot roads and hauling

boats and motors through bogs and swamps

to landings the Ojibway said were there

and where the jack and pickerel lurked

in the depths beyond the bass at the reeds

“more'n yuh could shake a stick at,” he said

and laughed and rubbed a calloused palm

along the windshield and talked about how

“this old girl, she done seen her day but she

still got go in her by god” and laughs again

and talks about his wife and him

coming here in the late summer of 1949

fresh off failed farmland outside of Milton

and determined to find waters like those

he fished as a boy in Finland and laughs

and tells me about pike longer than his arm

pulled out of the Ruunaa Rapids

and how this country here takes him back

even the smell of it he says and that's why

they come to build a fishing lodge here

because the Nipigon River runs like the

River Lieksanjoki of his youth and “by god

we got brook trout break da goddam arm sometimes”

he tells of building the lodge on the rocks

above a wide bend in the river

and how his wife came to love the feel

of the wind on her face those nights

when the work was done and she'd sit

in the willow rocker he built her

set under the eaves on the rough-hewn deck

and sing him Finnish folk songs

while he sat drinking tea and staring

out across the sweep of land

that reminded him so much of home

until one by one the stars winked

into view and they would move into the house

to lie awake to watch the moon shadow

creep across the log walls until sleep came and swept

them both away to Kuopio and the waters

they still loved as much as these

Anna-Liisa he says quietly and rubs

at the corner of an eye before he speaks again

she passed away three years before I met him

and he talks of laying her to rest

beneath the towering pines that hung

above the cleft of pink granite where

she planted wildflowers in the cracks and crevices

and he set that old willow rocker on those rocks

so he could go out of an evening and sit

and talk to her and sing old Finnish folk songs

while he watched the sun go down

“it's her land now by god” he says

“and my land too because of where she sleeps”

and there's nothing I can say but nod and smoke

and stare at the Nipigon River rushing south

beyond the peninsula and out into

the broad purple dream of Lake Superior

we ate sardines and crackers and drank warm ale

in the cab of that beat-up truck

and he asked me questions about myself

that I didn't hold the answers to and he

would nod his head and rub the dashboard

in small gentle circles with the pad

of one finger and smile sadly

“I come here to find myself” he said

“and it was not even yet my home

and here it's been yours all along

and still we make the same journey”

he dropped me off outside of Thunder Bay

in the chill and wet of morning

handed me thirty crumpled dollars

and said “come back and work by god”

and waved and drove away for food

supplies and a host of Finnish friends

and I stood alone

on the shoulder of another deserted highway

waiting, that summer of '74, and wishing

that I might make it back someday but

both of us knowing

that I never would

III

in Shebandowan the miners drive

their Cats into town to drink

with Ojibway kids

on the run from Kaministiquia

or Shabaqua or Atitkokan

roll them cigarettes one-handed

tell them horror stories of the mines

then let them win at pool

so they can get them drunk and laugh

there's something about a D8 Cat

that gives a man a sense of power

and maybe that's what they chase

so they don't have to think

of home and women and kids

or ordinary shit like that

they drink as they live

hard and fast, two-fisted

as if they could blow the foamy head

from all the tomorrows

and never heed the darkness

that walks with them

in the depths

instead they sit and drink and cuss

arm wrestle and brag

and leer at the Indian girls

until someone hollers “squaw”

and the fight breaks out

well, I heard all their stories

then I drank their beer for nothing

before kicking ass at pool

and thumbing out of town

with a pocketful of their money

IV

Riding out of Elkhorn with a gang of transients in the back of

a stake truck after stooking wheat for ten days in the Manitoba

heat. There's easier ways to make a buck but you take what

you can get when the Rambler Typhoon breaks down in the

middle of nowhere and the Mounties shake you awake by the

foot sleeping behind the Esso and give you the choice of “jail

or job.” Still, the food was good and when the guy beside you

asks you for a smoke you give him one because he told a real

good one about Cape Breton one night around the fire that

made you laugh like hell. The gang of you headed west.

Their names are gone but you recall the places: Come By

Chance, Sissiboo Falls, Moosehorn, Snag and Wandering

River. They were Russian, French, German, English, Inuit,

Swede and Blackfoot and everyone came with stories that

crackled with the light of the fire outside the bunk house

and there were songs sung all guttural and low while goatskins

got passed along with the last of someone's hash and you

could look up and see the moon hung like a blind man's eye

throwing everything in that prairie night into a mazy, snowy

blue that made each of those tales a portal you stepped

through as easily as breathing until the voices stilled and

the fire died and the lot of you stumbled to your bunks to

dream of better days somewhere beyond the dry rasp of wheat

and the press of heat like an iron to your back and clouds
of

chaff in your nose. You smoke and watch the land sail by and

wonder where you'll land next and someone bumps your foot

with the toe of a broken shoe and grins and you hand off the

butt and watch him lean his head back against the wooden

slat and exhale long and slow, the cloud of it vanishing back

behind the truck like dreams born somewhere you never

heard of before.

V

She kept an old and battered Bible

on the table made of packing crates

and drank Indian tea from metal cups

poured from a pot dangled

over a birch log fire

in the stone hearth that held

black and white photos of her children

and her husband all long gone

the edges scalloped, curled and yellowed

and medals from the Indian school

for penmanship and spelling

she lived in Eden Valley

in the shadows of the foothills for so long

she said, the hills became her bones

and she watched the reservation change

as the Old Ones like her died away

and the young ones drifted off

chasing city dreams and left their talk behind

but she taught me how to build a sweat

and sing an honour song to the breaking

day and to lay tobacco down when

we walked across the land to gather

the sweet grass and the sage

she taught me how to pray with

“always ask for nothing” she told me

“just give thanks for what's already here,

that's how an Indyun prays”

she told me stories

legends and amazing tales

of creatures and spirits and times before

things changed forever for the Stoney

and how the nuns at the residential schools

taught them how to scour everything

even the Indian off themselves

“then why the Bible?” I asked

and she smiled and took my hand

in both of hers like elders do

“because Jesus wept” she said

it took me years to finally get it

and when I did I looked up to the sky

and said thanks for everything that was

and is and ever would be

because Jesus wept

in gratitude for pain

and the salvation that comes

with the acceptance of it

when you learn to hold it

you can learn to let it go

it's how an Indian prays