Kimberly Blaeser

That old guy with the muskrat soup slurps it loudly from the ladle Hoowah, pretty good stuff! You shift your weight on the stool raise the bad leg just enough and retrieve the red bandana hankie. Talk still spills like sunshine over the knife-marred counter as slowly you wipe the can push the cloth back in your pocket and cough down the grape pop glancing at the bobbing black head where it surfaced in the pot. The burned farm. That hungry year. The long walk from Strawberry Mountain warmed now with the weight of fresh butchered wiiyaas in your pack. Mum’s baking soda biscuits mixed and cut lined waiting in the tin pan like our little kids’ faces at the window. Sure took the wrinkle out of our bellies that night. One opening day when those two old fishermen ended up drunk clinging to the canoe. The hunt for diamond willow, beaver camp on Easter weekend, the whitefish feeding on wax worms, the string of crappies slipped from your hand, the missing outhouse floor, training waaboose, feeding the least weasel, tales from working on the ships, from boiling sap, planting trees, pounding, carving, and then the cigar box memories of those old time Indians who could really tell stories

i. Spring the tips of each pine the spikes of telephone poles hold gathering crows may’s errant mustard spreads wild across paved road look both ways roadside treble cleft feeding gopher, paws to mouth cheeks puffed with music yesterday’s spring wind ruffling the grey tips of fur rabbit dandelion ii. Summer turkey vulture feeds mechanical as a red oil rig head rocks down up down stiff-legged dog rises goes grumbling after squirrel old ears still flap snowy egret—curves, lines, sculpted against pond blue; white clouds against sky banded headed bird this ballerina killdeer dance on point my heart iii. Fall leaf wind cold through coat wails over hills, through barren trees empty garbage cans dance damp September night lone farmer, lighted tractor drive memory’s worn path sky black with migration flocks settle on barren trees leaf birds, travel songs october moon cast over corn, lighted fields crinkled sheaves of white iv. Winter ground painted in frost thirsty morning sun drinks white leaves rust golds return winter bare branches hold tattered cups of summer empty nests trail twigs lace edges of ice manna against darkened sky words turn with weather now one to seven deer or haiku syllables weave through winter trees Northern follows jig body flashes with strike, dive: broken line floats up.

i. He could have taken you prisoner, of course when our two tribes were at war over whitefish and beaver territory and the Anishinaabeg chased your Indian ancestors from the woodlands he now brings you home to. Or your Dakota relatives might have waged a war party on their swift plains’ ponies to avenge your taking and bring you back from those uncivilized they named in disgust the rabbit-chokers. But those histories of dog-eaters and Chippewa crows are just a backdrop now for other stories told together by descendants of smallpox survivors and French fur traders, clan members of Wolf and of Water Spirit. And now you gather, trackers and scouts in new bloodless legal battles, still watch for mark and sign— for the flight of waterbirds. ii. Old histories that name us enemies don’t own us; nor do our politics grown so pow-wow liberal you seldom point out the follies of White Earth tribal leaders. (Except of course for the time our elected chair mistakenly and under the influence of civilization drove his pickup down the railroad tracks and made the tri-state ten o’clock news.) And Sundays behind the Tribune he seldom even mentions the rabid casino bucks or gets out his calculator and with lodge-pole eyebrows methodically measures beaded distances, results of territorial lines drawn in your homeland. And even though I have seen him sniff, glance over he really almost never checks the meat in your pot, nor reconnoiters the place of your rendezvous just to be sure.