byGloria Bird
- Rain fanning its gray light early over an eastern sky could be the tail of
some great salmon in the river of history. The sun comes up bright
forgetfulness. Sometimes the mind perverts the natural cycles clamping shut
around its petty denials and all things we refuse to bring into the present
with us. Freud knew the consequence of muffled history, yet continued to lie
about it, to disguise the one truth that might have liberated us all. I know
what I owe to women whose fingers were rubbed raw digging roots on some
northwestern plain. Maybe they were on-the-run or preparing the ceremonial
wake for the camas fields that would be replaced in their lifetimes by miles
of wheat. The land there bears our pain, and there is no cleansing only stark
refusals like the river receding from jutting rock. Back then, I did not
understand how the old people endured that sad place along the Tshimakain
where they would eat and tell stories beneath the pine trees. In a tender
fleshy place called inheritance, like an old wound healed over a small stone,
begins this long understanding, the way the bones of sleek animals that fed
generations belong to the river, are returned to those liquid beginnings to
communicate our need to those living there. To the earth goes the innermost
heart of the heart in which the essence of deer mingle with that of our
ancestors in this continuum where what we owe, we owe, and pass on to our
children.
From The River of History, Trask House Press.
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