places we cannot name

I am taught

we are all one.

I read the wind with my fingers to soil –

could hear incantations of freedom

in the whisper of poplar dancing leaves forced into jigging

by gale-force Prairie winds

like those dancers in enchanted shoes forced to gyrate to death.

 

Everyday holds transformation

big and small

so that tincture

powder

or incantations

need not appear before breaking dawn

or remembrances of how to love in forgiveness:

people

lives

pieces of ourselves we have hated.

 

My Ancestors would have seen this as life;

now we long for it as something from the places we go we cannot name.

(c) r. l. elke