If I Laid Them End to End

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