On Becoming A River
Just days ago
I drove through Squamish Mountains
with a Haida boy and a young Cree girl,
the young travelers and me
bound for ceremony in Stat-lee-um woods
glancing at the young ones
I was for a moment fearful of what lay before them,
not the ceremony but the hostile world, the merciless world
of course, only people are foolish enough to concern themselves with things yet to be
I am still learning
think like a river, I said out loud to them
the words once given to me by an old Ojibway woman,
when I was younger
think like a river and it may be so, she said
her words lingered in the air and my mind drifted into holy memory
my own place of sacred things
here, I return again and again
to a tranquil spot at a slight curve on the South Thompson,
amid the lush breast of *Secwepemc Territory
and long amber rays of warm and dusky sunlight in the early October evening –
it is the Moon of Falling Leaves
managing to find myself alone
I sit among the sandy banks in silence,
in clear view of the gravel shallows near me where the river is but a trickle –
Here, can be heard the din of insects, all winged and buzzing things
flitting and darting above the abundant deposits of fresh bear scat,
The cackle of distracted crows and their lunatic agenda
A pair of eagles, one disheveled if not slightly ragged,
the other regal, its feathers smooth and nearly black with age,
clearly a couple, they feast undisturbed on carrion the far side of the bend
Dispersed everywhere in places farther and closer to me
are the sacrificial smelt and decaying forms of spent salmon
the sentient beings somehow still dignified, still important
as evidenced by the whole host of life teeming at their scattered and bountiful remains
their eroding but nutrient bodies feeding and caring for all who live here
There is nothing worldly here, just peace and murmuring stillness
Serenity lulls me into warm thoughts of drifting away, perhaps forever
with the soothing currents in the middle deeper waters
I breathe in the same particles of air that rushed through throats and filled the lungs
of tribespeople in my grandmother's grandmother's age,
air that has passed continuously through life on earth, endlessly, infinitely...
The calm shattered by a flash
I am startled by the sun-splashed, quicksilver burst
of an immaculate fish lifting itself into the air, into a somersault -
upside down and backwards
as if desperate to cry out: I am here!
Its thrash - a glorious display, definitive and remarkable
then a spattering commotion and downward return to life below the surface with the rest
The split-second event a defiant response to forces
that would deter the relentless quest for home
The reserves of stamina remaining steadfast
in the mission, the quest, maybe even the pilgrimage –
perhaps the very reason for being
Not predators, currents or the fearsome march of time
will keep them from going home
In that instant I was touched...changed
became connected to ones vying for that place just a little further on
our kinship rooted in our obedience to a great if not solitary pursuit,
we are orphans of a type,
coming into the world seemingly at the expense of our parent's lives,
like the young smolt and fry, my folks gave their lives to bring me here
and I have made this entire journey without them
a drama composed for me by unknown hands
I cannot speak for the salmon
but mine has always been a longing to be defined by something other than absence
so, I exalt in remembering that ordinary day emptying into twilight,
sitting there thinking wild thoughts before joining the night and stars
Since then,
I remain susceptible to those wild thoughts
and to thinking of myself as that river
meandering
raging
rolling
treacherous
formidable
coursing
swirling
dark, deep and sometimes shallow
but with clear origins at the feet of venerable mountains,
like the bloodlines to ancestors,
this may well be where I emerged out of spirit into being...
forever enchanted by you and a moment in time,
actually, changed in that moment
now always the memory of that moment
and this, my own momentous cry that I was here
Sometimes the reasons for things in life cannot be named
Where once I was a boy with the worship solely of buffalo in my blood
now, these many miles and years later I come endowed
with reverence for salmon and for the lifelong voyage home in my wandering soul
It is a blessing to be Indian, more so to be Cree
but I am more like the salmon these days
more a creature at once resilient and fragile,
manipulated and wild,
at times I think it sinful of me to envy the majestic and unassuming salmon
or to wish to unlock the secrets of the great ocean pasture that only they know
observing their stark refusal to be anything but what they are
their graceful singularity of purpose to be undaunted
I am contented in believing the songs of these places
do not end at the banks and tree-lines of territories
but are alive and sung in the hearts of those who love these things
I am no elder
but I know that people protect what they love –
I know this much
So, for now I remain willingly chained to my life as a freedom fighter in the false-hearted city
witnessing and sometimes helping establish small freedoms,
occasional escapes by those Indians with some place to go
I hurl myself ever upstream through the urban wilderness,
inventing ceremony and ways of manifesting cracks
because like Uncle Leonard said, THAT's how the light gets in
still navigating the roiling waters, where I have been shown by salmon
that even without mom and dad to help them along
even the tiny roe, on their own,
still manage to find fire for life in the cold stone of a river bed
It seems to me now that I may have been called to the edge of that water
a response to my yearning to be kept in the heart of things
if not in the ones that I love
as when salmon quit the sea and the river calls them home,
upstream to the birthplace
to fertilize the alpine womb
But I am fed, warmed and infused with the spirit and memory of that place
There are many ways to salvation and one of them is a river
so, I am thinking like a river
because inside me is a nameless salmon
a salmon leaping - leaping for life - into the eternal and transcendent moment
where all beings merge into one
Hearing an ancient song only the heart understands –
the sound and vision clutched and held onto by one dazed and love-sick Cree
all dissolving into distance and oblivion
*(Secwepemc: Shuswap)
