“Everywhere you step
You are walking on bones,”
Said the man
On his bench
On the street
Across from a graveyard
With markers
Of totem poles.
It was on an island of death
That my mother
Visited me.
She was there
In the clock
On the wall,
In the former
Church-cum-lodge,
In Alert Bay,
The same,
As the one
In the kitchen of
My family-of-origin home
Albeit, a different color of plastic,
But cheap, nonetheless.
Its doorknobs
The same as the doorknobs at home
Although these ones could be locked.
Mark doubted me
That you, mom,
Were there, with me,
On the Island.
He didn’t hear the grandfather
With grandson,
Down by the water,
Call to his mutt,
“Here Teeka. Here.”
A dog named as my
Pet-name, for my mother.
“Sometimes,” I think,
“You can’t make this shit up.”
There were sparkles
Following in waves,
And eagles chattering in a tree,
And children dancing reclaimed steps
In the Big House
For the sake of visitors
Who didn’t even know what to ask
And three graveyards filled
With people
Who were younger
Than me.
Trauma walks around
The Mount
Until it’s time for leadership
To Pass.
“You are not selfish,”
My rabbi wrote to me,
“It is that you
Actually have a self.”
Sometimes words really aren’t mole-hills,
Sometimes words become mountains,
Best to abandon.
It’s been more
Than 40 years since
I left “home.”
Ask me what I want to carry,
But don’t be surprised when I say,
“Nothing.”
