Runaway Dreams by Richard Wagamese

neglect
    unlike the marble and granite headstones
    that proclaim the resting places of nuns
    and priests devoted to the earthly toil
    of saving lost and ravaged souls
    for a god and a book that says
    to suffer the children to come
    unto the light that never really
    shone for them
    ever
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    even the wind is lonely here
    clouds skim low and the chill
    becomes a living thing that invades
    the mind and there is nothing
    not even prayer in any human tongue
    that can lift the pall of dispiritedness
    created here for them to sleep in
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    a brother’s grave somewhere in the rough
    and tangle of the grasses can’t be seen
    only felt like a cold spot between the ribs
    and a caught breath sharp with tears
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    bitterness
    what they slipped onto the tongues
    of generations removed from us
    like a wafer
    soaked in vinegar
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    they say we Indians never say goodbye
    but I doubt that’s true
    no people in their right minds or hearts
    would cling to these sad effigies
    the knowledge that someone once thought
    that they were less than human
    deserving nothing in the end
    but an unmarked plot of earth
    beneath a sullen sky the weeds and grasses
    stoked by wind to sing their only benediction
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    we bid goodbye
    to nuns and priests
    and schools
    that only ever taught us pain
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    keep your blessing for yourselves
    in the end you’re the ones
    who need them

Ojibway Dream
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    There’s nothing like a can of Spam mixed
    with eggs, canned potatoes and a mug of
    campfire coffee with the grounds still in
    cooked over an open flame
    and even if there was it wouldn’t measure
    up to the crucial test of how it tastes
    on bannock made on a stick
    that’s just the plain truth of things
    well, a pickerel packed in clay and tossed
    into the fire comes awful close
    as long as there’s greens and wild mushrooms
    tossed over flame and then blueberries
    all washed down with Ojibway tea
    then a smoke to share
    with the Spirits might
    just come close
    but then again a nice moose rubaboo
    properly done with flour, water and maple
    syrup with bannock for dipping is hard
    to resist at the best of times provided
    there’s a cob of corn roasted on the fire
    with the husk still on and water from
    the river cold and rich with the mineral taste
    that reminds you of rocks and lakes upstream
    and time and the fact that the way
    to an Ojibway man’s heart
    isn’t through his stomach
    but through his recollections
    while seated on a cheap red stool
    in a plastic diner looking out
    over a freeway choked with cars
    and people hungering
    for something better tasting
    than success

Copper Thunderbird
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    in memory of Norval Morrisseau
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    Diogenes you said went walking
    with a lamp in the broadest daylight
    in a search for one good man
    as though that would explain how
    they came to find you lurking
    in the bushes beyond Hastings & Main drunk
    that early summer of ’87
    raving and talking in ebullient colours
    as though the air were a canvas
    and legends are born on the dire breath
    of rot-gut sherry and the twisting snake
    of dreams bred in the bruise of hangover mornings
    where Diogenes wakes to crawl
    on hands and knees into the light himself
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    you chuckled then
    said they’d never get you
    and the truth is they never did
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    in the belly of legends lives
    the truth of us
    where shape-shifters walk and flying skeletons
    cruise the long nights of our souls
    and the tricksters inhabit the dark
    where the light of the lamp
    you shone there bleeds fantastic colour
    into the crevices we’ve learned
    to be afraid to look into for fear
    we’d see ourselves peering outward
    and know we needed you or your like
    to paint us home
    you talked to me of birch bark scrolls
    and your grandfather’s cabin in the trees
    where the map of our being laid out in pictographs
    was translated in the talk you said
    was the original talk of our people
    that’s rarely spoken