a poem inspired by June O'Brien's reading last month...
“Skinwalker”
(1-20-10)
I grew up drinking from her stories, Allie.
She was always in me; in the mother-line, though I never knew her.
Black Turtle Woman, I felt her walking with me. Every step I took; whispering secrets
I had been born too late to know, in a language
boiling and seething in my blood,
beneath my skin, but forgotten.
Sik’sika. Pikuni. Kainah.
Aamsskáápipikani
Niitsitapi.
I honored her the only way I could, yearning
to be in Montana, where the People roamed, once
though I lived but one state away, and feared the snows.
White like my father, I played in the sun. A sacrifice; burned to pink,
tanned to brown. My traitorous hair, bleached white by the sun
dyed determinedly black, year after year; maybe someday it will take.
Always in the winter, growing in too dark to be blond…
but not brown enough to show…what was inside
and bursting out.
Naming all the dogs and horses in Pikanii. Living first in a trailer park
Dad yelling with drunk. Then in a cabin; but always square, and still the yelling.
Yearned for a ti’pi, for years; nui’yis, in her tongue;
the quiet of winds sweeping over silent grasses, in the tiny plain beside the house.
Finally settling for a childish extrapolation
made of old sheets and aluminum tent-poles,
beneath the tree-house, where I’d take salt with my brother,
licking it solemnly from our palms, while we sat in the dust.
Dedicating the salt to Na’pi
To Sun, Thunder, Coyote. To Poya and Old Man and Wolf.
A communion, because it was fire-season, and we weren’t allowed a fire
(and God knows, not to smoke. A sacrament too profane.)
Later when Dad found us a nui’yis
made of heavy canvas drill, from the back lot
of the studios, on his last trip south, I was ecstatic
lived in it every summer, monk-like in ascetic wonder
while the horses cropped beside me, mowing down the meadow edges
nibbling the tent-pegs, in their leisurely way, ambling
one of them small enough to be the Indian pony.
I rode bareback, one-roped;
warm half-wild dogs sleeping with me of a night because
it was still fire-season, and there could be no fire in the circle
in the center. And my altar bore the skull of a wolf.
My animal-helper.
Omahkapi'si.
Gave me my name. Ma‘kuyi Ah‘ki.
Talks Stories Wolf Woman,
Daughter of Warm Wind At Night.
Grand-daughter of Allie Trickling Streams;
Black Turtle Woman.
I was twenty when I finally went to my first pow-wow
ecstatic again to be there; just be there, finally:
Stepping out of Sherman Alexie
to be saged, eat fry-bread and watch the fancy-dancers
hear the drumming, like thunder;
see ribbons flirting with the wind,
from elbows and ankles.
Thrumming
with the need to be out there and dance, but honoring
trying to honor the tradition,
to wait, and earn this.
Till the third day, when the circle was opened
in the final dance, to every comer. Then it burst out of me;
a dance practiced for twenty years of desperate reading;
and gleaning from books because
I had no teacher.
Burst out of me then;
three days and a lifetime, holding back, wishing
my hair was blacker, my skin browner
my history was ragged enough, my family poor enough,
as lost between lives.
Dancing, I felt an instant’s belonging
a wild joy so keen that I could have crowed like a raven,
keened like a hawk. howled like a wolf. Ma’kuyi Ah‘ki was wild that day...
Then I was asked to stop dancing.
Stop expressing my inexpressible joy
because the dance I was dancing was not sanctioned
and I should dance the way the others danced;
the women, a staid and steady heel-toe heel-toe
far too contained for what I could no longer contain.
Crushed, irate, I subdued that soaring something
that for a moment had been my soul, let free;
the dance and the moment, ruined for me.
Culture confusion, gender confusion;
in the old days they called her manly-hearted woman
now it is only; dance as the others do.
Which thing remembered, which thing forgotten?
Which thing hurt the worst?
I had once thought…I would seek a teacher.
Find someone to give tobacco; someone who would show me
all that I did not know;
because she followed me haunted me
only in my dreams, and in my soul.
But was not in my life. Now I knew
they could not see inside, past the skin my father gave me
to where we were the same;
the poverty, the alcohol, the need to hang on
while the tide of forgetfulness and thin blood swept it all away;
and living too fast.
It was then I knew, it was just a dream.
I was too white to ask. Just too far over the border to belong.
Too close to you, Black Turtle Woman, to ever let it go.
I found a Lodge, later
where those making their way in between the lines
came together, designed their own
family of fire and dance, stories and blood
seeking the line between where we are now
and what we were then;
our own family of half-breeds, caught between pantheons;
Every one of us a Healer. Every one of us a shaman.
Healing ourselves.
Found the commonality between them, the common threads,
to sew my two separate parts together.
The belonging there was what I had been searching for.
Even you, Turtle-Brother. Found you there.
It was all that I had wanted, and yet…
I still wonder, what would have happened. Where I would be, now
if I had found it there…then.
(1-20-10)
I grew up drinking from her stories, Allie.
She was always in me; in the mother-line, though I never knew her.
Black Turtle Woman, I felt her walking with me. Every step I took; whispering secrets
I had been born too late to know, in a language
boiling and seething in my blood,
beneath my skin, but forgotten.
Sik’sika. Pikuni. Kainah.
Aamsskáápipikani
Niitsitapi.
I honored her the only way I could, yearning
to be in Montana, where the People roamed, once
though I lived but one state away, and feared the snows.
White like my father, I played in the sun. A sacrifice; burned to pink,
tanned to brown. My traitorous hair, bleached white by the sun
dyed determinedly black, year after year; maybe someday it will take.
Always in the winter, growing in too dark to be blond…
but not brown enough to show…what was inside
and bursting out.
Naming all the dogs and horses in Pikanii. Living first in a trailer park
Dad yelling with drunk. Then in a cabin; but always square, and still the yelling.
Yearned for a ti’pi, for years; nui’yis, in her tongue;
the quiet of winds sweeping over silent grasses, in the tiny plain beside the house.
Finally settling for a childish extrapolation
made of old sheets and aluminum tent-poles,
beneath the tree-house, where I’d take salt with my brother,
licking it solemnly from our palms, while we sat in the dust.
Dedicating the salt to Na’pi
To Sun, Thunder, Coyote. To Poya and Old Man and Wolf.
A communion, because it was fire-season, and we weren’t allowed a fire
(and God knows, not to smoke. A sacrament too profane.)
Later when Dad found us a nui’yis
made of heavy canvas drill, from the back lot
of the studios, on his last trip south, I was ecstatic
lived in it every summer, monk-like in ascetic wonder
while the horses cropped beside me, mowing down the meadow edges
nibbling the tent-pegs, in their leisurely way, ambling
one of them small enough to be the Indian pony.
I rode bareback, one-roped;
warm half-wild dogs sleeping with me of a night because
it was still fire-season, and there could be no fire in the circle
in the center. And my altar bore the skull of a wolf.
My animal-helper.
Omahkapi'si.
Gave me my name. Ma‘kuyi Ah‘ki.
Talks Stories Wolf Woman,
Daughter of Warm Wind At Night.
Grand-daughter of Allie Trickling Streams;
Black Turtle Woman.
I was twenty when I finally went to my first pow-wow
ecstatic again to be there; just be there, finally:
Stepping out of Sherman Alexie
to be saged, eat fry-bread and watch the fancy-dancers
hear the drumming, like thunder;
see ribbons flirting with the wind,
from elbows and ankles.
Thrumming
with the need to be out there and dance, but honoring
trying to honor the tradition,
to wait, and earn this.
Till the third day, when the circle was opened
in the final dance, to every comer. Then it burst out of me;
a dance practiced for twenty years of desperate reading;
and gleaning from books because
I had no teacher.
Burst out of me then;
three days and a lifetime, holding back, wishing
my hair was blacker, my skin browner
my history was ragged enough, my family poor enough,
as lost between lives.
Dancing, I felt an instant’s belonging
a wild joy so keen that I could have crowed like a raven,
keened like a hawk. howled like a wolf. Ma’kuyi Ah‘ki was wild that day...
Then I was asked to stop dancing.
Stop expressing my inexpressible joy
because the dance I was dancing was not sanctioned
and I should dance the way the others danced;
the women, a staid and steady heel-toe heel-toe
far too contained for what I could no longer contain.
Crushed, irate, I subdued that soaring something
that for a moment had been my soul, let free;
the dance and the moment, ruined for me.
Culture confusion, gender confusion;
in the old days they called her manly-hearted woman
now it is only; dance as the others do.
Which thing remembered, which thing forgotten?
Which thing hurt the worst?
I had once thought…I would seek a teacher.
Find someone to give tobacco; someone who would show me
all that I did not know;
because she followed me haunted me
only in my dreams, and in my soul.
But was not in my life. Now I knew
they could not see inside, past the skin my father gave me
to where we were the same;
the poverty, the alcohol, the need to hang on
while the tide of forgetfulness and thin blood swept it all away;
and living too fast.
It was then I knew, it was just a dream.
I was too white to ask. Just too far over the border to belong.
Too close to you, Black Turtle Woman, to ever let it go.
I found a Lodge, later
where those making their way in between the lines
came together, designed their own
family of fire and dance, stories and blood
seeking the line between where we are now
and what we were then;
our own family of half-breeds, caught between pantheons;
Every one of us a Healer. Every one of us a shaman.
Healing ourselves.
Found the commonality between them, the common threads,
to sew my two separate parts together.
The belonging there was what I had been searching for.
Even you, Turtle-Brother. Found you there.
It was all that I had wanted, and yet…
I still wonder, what would have happened. Where I would be, now
if I had found it there…then.