Joseph Bruchac

for Rick Hill and in memory of Buster Mitchell I Steel arches up past the customs sheds, the bridge to a place named Canada, thrust into Mohawk land. A dull rainbow arcing over the new school, designed to fan out like the tail of the drumming Partridge— dark feathers of the old way's pride mixed in with blessed Kateri's pale dreams of sacred water. II When that first span fell in 1907 cantilevered shapes collapsed, gave like an old man's arthritic back. The tide was out, the injured lay trapped like game in a deadfall all through that day until the evening. Then, as tide came in, the priest crawled through the wreckage, giving last rites to the drowning. III Loading on, the cable lifts. Girders swing and sing in sun. Tacked to the sky, reflecting wind, long knife-blade mirrors they fall like jackstraws when they hit the top of the big boom's run. The cable looped, the buzzer man pushes a button red as sunset. The mosquito whine of the motor whirrs bare bones up to the men who stand an edge defined on either side by a long way down. IV Those who hold papers claim to have ownership of buildings and land. They do not see the hands which placed each rivet. They do not hear the feet walking each hidden beam. They do not hear the whisper of strong clan names. They do not see the faces of men who remain unseen as those girders which strengthen and shape.

Seeing photos of ancestors a century past is like looking at your own fingerprints— circles and lines you can't recognize until someone else with a stranger's eye looks close and says that's you.