Runaway Dreams

by Richard Wagamese

  I left it there

  returned it to the place of its beginnings

  and watched while the surf rolled it over

  and over again until it disappeared

  like the brush when it’s lifted

  at the end of the line

  I don’t know why it is, Morrisseau

  that we come to cling to stories so

  only perhaps that something in us understands

  that what we get from reality sometimes

  is only the veneer, the fixative perhaps

  that holds everything in place so the art

  can happen underneath it all forever

  Copper Thunderbird, you said to me

  tell the story for the story’s sake

  let the line lead them where it will

  and don’t forget that the best ones come

  from everything that’s gone before

  so never be afraid to splash

  enough colour to wake them up to that

  and in that way, you said

  they’ll get you in the end

  and the truth is

  they sometimes do

  In Peigan Country 1993

  You drive west out of Calgary

  swing left at Bragg Creek to the east and down

  through Millarville then due south again

  letting the blacktop lead you through Turner Valley

  while Van Morrison sings something about

  travelling himself and with the windows open

  the svelte jump of rhythm and blues

  gets punctuated by the sudden cry

  of a red-tailed hawk skimming across the highway

  and the black comma of a bear

  eating berries on a hill

  you’ve come to love this drive

  the unnecessary westward loop of it

  you take just because it feels so good

  to motor through this country

  that rollicks with good cowboy humour

  and rolls with the solemnity

  of a well-told tribal tale

  this ancient sea

  crumpled up into foothills

  at Turner Valley you swing west again

  and climb into the arms of the Rockies

  and you’ve switched to Leos Janacek now

  letting the romantic swirl of violins

  ease you upward so that

  rounding a curve you look out across

  the great purple stretch of prairie

  and the sloping curve of the planet

  framed by clouds and the ghostly echo

  of the pounding hooves of Peigan ponies

  chasing buffalo to the cliff in the gully

  where women wait with knives and clubs

  and honour songs to take the sacred meat

  of their older brother and join it

  to their own

  the road bends into grizzly country

  and there’s a long sloping downward curve

  between the hump of twin ridges

  and where it levels out there’s the sudden

  smell of medicine sage from a meadow

  flat as a table

  and you ease the car to the shoulder

  clamber out and squint across the wide green

  to the resolute grey and weathered face

  of the granite cliffs at its southern edge

  there’s a packet of tobacco in the trunk

  and retrieving it you set out across

  this perfect meadow while ground squirrels

  voice their irritation at your presence

  and the smell of sage is so sharp

  you can feel it in your lungs

  at the far end the ground drops off at your feet

  and there’s the gorge in a narrow

  vertical drop to the river twisting

  into rapids and pools far below

  and the sage is growing thick as hair

  on the sheer slope of it

  so you offer tobacco and a prayer

  and bend to gather this sacred medicine

  and you can hear the river and the wind

  and the voices of the squirrels

  and the swish of the meadow grasses

  like the whisper of fancy-dance shawls

  and young girls’ feet kicking gracefully

  to the beat of a drum

  and you lose yourself so completely

  in the timeless feel of this act of gathering

  that when the wind picks up you smell

  the rain and there’s a sudden bank of clouds

  pushed in low above the cliffs

  with the roll of thunder and the smell of lightning

  and you stand and just for a second

  in the middle of that meadow

  you see a circle of tipis

  and the people dancing

  but there’s a flash of lightning

  and the vision winks out

  and you’re stood there

  on the precipice

  with an armful of sage

  feeling honoured

  and blessed and a little weak in the knees

  but happier than you’ve ever been

  walking back across that meadow

  the rain pelts down and you lift your face

  so that it can wash you

  and reaching the car you tuck the medicine away

  and turn to the rain again

  and dance shirtless

  in that meadow where the people came

  in the Long Ago Time to sing and celebrate

  this power you feel all around you

  and in that rain and in the presence

  of the vision you took for real

  you came to realize that freedom

  is the shrugging off of worldly things

  and that in the ceremony of that

  lies a common practical magic

  that’s not so much Indian as it is human

  an ordinary thing we lose

  when we cease believing in things

  like dancing shirtless in the rain

  medicine and ceremony and prayer

  and the ability of the planet to show us things

  she keeps sheltered in her breast

  driving home you listened to the music

  of the medicine on the seat behind you

  the sage, the women’s power

  grandmother teachings

  holding everything together

  The Trouble with Indians

  The trouble with these Indians he says, is they want everything

  for nothing. There follows a clamour of grunts and the thump

  of beer glasses hitting the table and you can tell by the look of

  him that he’s just hitting his stride. The other thing, he says,

  is that they blame us poor schmucks for what went down in

  our great-great-grandfather’s time, like we gotta shell out now

  for what happened then. This land claim business and this

  treaty rights business and the whole reconciliation thing? It’s

  all about money anyhow and me I don’t figure there’s a way

  for anybody to buy their way back into the past. But you get

  those brown fuckers started and all they want to talk about is

  their grandfather and how if things were now like they were

  then we’d all be better off. I call BS on that. Before we came

  they had nothin’. They weren’t even using the land they lay

  claim to now. There’s a round of “amen to that,” “give ’er

  straight,” and “friggin’ A.” And someone shouts across the

  room for another round and the guy settles into his chair and

  meets everybody’s eye before he starts in again. We give ’em

  guns and money, steel and liquor and an invitation to the

  future and all they could ante up was a toboggan, snowshoes

  and an ear or two of corn. W
e give them religion, education,

  government, reservations and no frickin’ taxes and all they

  can do is whine about someone stealing their land when they

  weren’t lookin’. They get every friggin’ thing for free, free

  house, free health care, free university, free land, free jobs at

  the damn band office and still no frickin’ taxes and they still

  whine about what they lost. But they can drink our liquor,

  screw our women, claim our rightful property, sue our

  government for cash they don’t try to earn in any kind of

  respectful way and then they go and tell the world how bad

  they’re done by here. He stands up and holds a hand over

  his heart and belts out a line or two in a big bass voice.

  “O Canada,” he sings. “Your home’s on native land.” Everyone

  laughs like hell, even the waitress who drops him a free one.

  When he sits back down there’s big, hearty, manly slaps on

  the back and shoulders and he basks in it, swallows half his

  beer and grins like a silly kid who farted at the table. You can

  always tell an Indian, he says, pauses and looks everybody in

  the eye, holds the moment, savours it, then says, can’t tell ’em

  much . . . and laughter rocks the place again. He flicks his

  watch up to his face, and drains off his beer and stands to

  hitch his pants and straighten his suit. “Been fun but I gotta

  work,” he says and turns to leave. “Where you workin’ anyway?”

  someone asks. He turns at the door and levels a grin at

  everyone. “Indian Affairs,” he says and his belly laugh follows

  him out into the world.

  Medicine Wheel

  I

  When you come to stand upon the land there’s a sense in you

  that you’ve seen it all before. Not in any empirical way. Not

  in any western sense of recognition but in the way it comes

  to feel upon your skin, the way it floods you with recollection.

  Standing here beside this tiny creek in the mountains you

  suddenly remember how it felt to catch minnows in a jar.

  The goggle-eyed sense of wonder at those silvered, wriggling

  beams of light darting between stones and the feel of the

  water on your arms, cool and slick as the surface of dreams.

  You lived your life for the sudden flare of sunlight when

  you broke from the bush back then and the land beckoned

  through your bedroom window so that sometimes when the

  house was dark and quiet you stood there just to hear the call

  of it spoken in a language that you didn’t know but that filled

  you nonetheless with something you’ve grown to recognize

  as hope. So that you came to approach the land like an old

  familiar hymn, quietly, respectfully, each step a measure, each

  breath a softly exhaled note. That creek ran out of farmland

  and wound its way to the reservoir behind an old mill, the

  voice of it a chuckle, its edges dappled by the shadows of old

  elms and its light like the dancing bluish-green eyes of the

  girl on the bus you could never find a way to say a word to. So

  you lay across a long flat stone to dip a mason jar elbows deep

  and hung there, suspended in your boyhood, while minnows

  nibbled at your fingertips and the breeze brought moss and

  ferns and rot and scent of cows and flowers to you and you let

  that arm dangle until the feeling went away then raised it with

  minnows frantic in the sudden absence of their world. Oh,

  you couldn’t keep them. Couldn’t carry them home like a

  carnival prize, give them names or place them in a bowl upon

  your desk. No, something in you understood even as a boy of

  twelve that some things ache to be free and the charm of

  them resides in their ability to be that freedom. So you let

  them go. Let them swim away. But when you rose you carried

  something of that creek, that cold against your arms, the

  sun-warmed stone against your belly, the breeze, the light and

  the idea of minnows, away with you forever. So that standing

  here at fifty-five on the edge of another laughing creek you’re

  returned to that place, and you’re surprised to find it here

  like the feeling of opening your eyes after sleep and finding

  home all around you once again. It’s a journey, this life.

  A crossing of creeks on stepping stones where so much comes

  to depend on maintaining balance on every careful placing

  of the foot.

  II

  weweni bizindan

  omaa ashi awe asemaa

  listen careful

  put the tobacco here

  lay it soft upon the Earth and pray

  say great thanks to your Mother

  for everything she gives to you

  and walk this way

  in the path of the sun across the sky

  for this is the trek

  we all must make

  so that we can gather medicine

  to make this life a ceremony

  anami’aawin — a prayer

  to all that is

  and everything that will be

  upon our journey’s end

  a great walking

  this path whose final gift

  is vision

  III

  them they call it the medicine wheel but us

  we never had no need for wheels

  so it’s always been a sacred circle

  then and now for us

  see, wheels my boy, had to be invented

  and this was always just a gift to people

  something that always was

  and always gonna be

  on accounta Spirit made it

  them teachin’s never come from us

  but we come to own them

  when we make the journey

  pass ’em on then

  make sure to honour

  the gift they are that way

  that’s the medicine way, my boy

  gwekwaadziwin — respect

  just knowin’ that everything and everyone

  has their place here

  and us sometimes we need to help

  each other find our way

  if that’s a wheel

  me I hope it keeps on turnin’

  IV

  you lie on this slant of hillside

  staring up at a sky dimpled

  with the light of countless

  possible worlds

  and it feels like you’re impaled

  on it somehow

  the motion of the planet

  the tilt and whirl and spin of it

  easing you upwards

  back into star dust

  Star People came once a long time ago

  to sit at the fires of the Anishinabeg

  and bring stories and teacher talk

  that filled their world with dreams

  the Old Ones say they were a gentle sort

  and they brought the idea of ceremony

  like a great and ancient light

  and medicine was born

  we all of us are energy they said

  we all of us are dream and story

  and in the end we return to it

  to energy, to spirit, to the great

  ongoing tale of our becoming

  because there is no end, no finality

  only a sacred circle spinning

  within us

  the spirit place we’re meant to travel to

  to find the truth of us, the song

  we carry forward i
nto dream

  sung into story, sung into light

  sung into spirit that comes to join

  the energy of all things, the completeness

  of that sacred circle spinning everywhere at once

  all things coming true

  together

  the circle is wholeness

  whose first principle is equality

  that creates harmony

  that creates the balance

  that comes to mean

  the humility that transcends all things

  that itself evolves into the love

  that’s born within and reflected out

  to keep the circle spinning

  they left us then

  returning to the place of all beginnings

  as the old ones say

  and we began the journey to ourselves

  the circle of us turning

  into years into time into the history

  of our time here

  the story of us

  all we ever have

  all we carry with us

  and all we leave behind

  so you lie on a slant of hillside

  against a bowl of stars

  the earth pressed against your back

  and the feel of that immense fullness

  everywhere around you breathing

  it into you until you rise finally

  to make your way back

  to whatever location held you in place

  long enough for you to feel

  lonely for the sky

  V

  You come to fifty-five like you came to thirteen. Expectant as a

  pup at the door waiting for someone to kick it open and send

  you galumphing out into the world again all legs and lungs

  and joy. That’s the trick of it, really. That’s what they mean

  when people say medicine wheel. Wisdom turning into itself

  again. The journey we make that brings us back to the only

  place it can — the place of all beginnings — the innocence

  we are born in and the great, wide, all-encompassing wisdom

  of that. You get to be a boy again, charmed by the simple,

  the ordinary, the commonplace and seeing magic in it.

  You’d make that journey anytime and the wonder of it lies