Said nothing to me
He forgave me; I was
Part of this world and knew nothing about
Some dead fellow
Who told Jean’s people
They could all be born again
I wondered where they’d find the women
Who’d volunteer for the job.
Far Lands, Strange Customs
(Heron Feathers solves a few mysteries)
“I’m going with him,” I told my father.
“No problem,” he said, stretching a beaver pelt
“Just learn their accursed language,
Let us know if there really is
Anything in that book
And find out what they do
With all those pelts.”
Twenty years later, I’d figured out
How to curse like a buffalo hunter in
French, English, and Cheyenne
That the book had only one manitou
And millions of white guys, somewhere
Lived in mortal fear
Of frozen brains.
The Parting
(Heron Feather’s mother says good-bye)
“I will not see you again,” she said
Giving me a stone with the Turtle on it.
“There will be a hollowness in the sunshine
There will be a silence in the night
I was warmed by your first cry
I burn with your last farewell
I am cold with your last farewell
Somewhere outside my uncle laughed
An owl hooted, twice
“Go with him,” she said. “You are young and
There is a big life ahead of you.
I am old, and this
Is only a little death.”
Part of Some River
(Lollie indulges in rhyme and romance in the same poem! Heron Feathers to Jean, when they are old, looking back on their life.)
Oh, Love, we were bubbles
In the flotsam of time
Part of this river
Part of some rhyme
All promises fulfilled
All projects on hold
We had so many rivers
Before we grew old
The March wind was singing
Some wild hero’s song
The canoe was ready
The evenings grew long
And now we’re a couplet
In the epic of time
We followed our rivers
To the end of our rhyme
All dreams and all rivers
To the end of our rhyme
Come and Share the World
(Heron Feathers on her first night away from home)
Come and share the world with me
My night is full of fears
And on tomorrow’s portages, we’ll place
Our footprints on the years
Come and share the night with me
Warmth on warmth in dark
When the wind shakes the tent
You’ll be fire, I’ll be spark
You be fire, I’ll be spark
Against the tears of night
In reach and touch and sudden flame
Enfold, then hold on tight
Only the Wind Knows a Woman’s True Name
(Heron Feathers settles into a Métis village)
If you think you know me
Tying my dark hair in the thin morning light
Maybe you missed the part where
Wolves howl in the darkness
Of the frozen moon
If you think you understand me
Singing by the fire in the evening
Repairing your shoes
Or preparing our meal
Then you must include the part
Where I camped alone, silent
Waiting for my manitou to speak
If you think you’ve found me
In softness and warmth in our night
Be sure to include the unbending rock
At the base of my forestshadow soul
Man; if you don’t know the chill of flame
The warmth of snow
Stay out of the forest.
Lesson
(Heron Feathers and Jean celebrate their first anniversary)
I am from the woods. You
Are just passing through.
You've bedded me and sang to me
And laughed with me.
We've taught each other words
Me, French, you, Cree
And we've gone a thousand miles
Canoe and horseback.
You think you know me, my man
You will learn to
Be rough with my fears
Tender with my memories
Stay away
From my dreams
Unless I ask.
The Show
(Jean and Heron Feathers reach the open prairie)
The sky above was a circus tent
And we all came to the big valley
For the show
The big canoes, the skeering carts
Buffooning westward on a sea of pemmican
With the strange burlesque of beaver pelts
Flowing east like a pulsing brown river.
Oh, I thought, we have fabricated God
As easily as a buckskin coat
And now that we’ve finally made our way to this stage
We are determined to amuse ourselves before our best of all
Our creations.
Watch the people fight; see the buffalo run and vanish
The grassfires will roll from Batoche to bottomland
The halfbreeds fiddle, while the locals leave tobacco on
The hills and the black robes sing of Galilee.
Welcome to the pemmican palace; may the
Flesh Made Word protect us from the reality
Of that vaudeville sky.
Part 4: North-Central Manitoba
Lollie leaves the woods of northern Ontario for the woods of north-central Manitoba. She wants some time alone with the forest.
In the first days there, she finds herself, as predicted by her son, in a thirty-dollar motel room, depressed, sharing the company of a bottle, and angry at time, life, aging, and assorted other things she can’t change.
But she takes a canoe trip by herself, has a spiritual contact with another set of petroglyphs, and ends up much happier.
Highway
(Lollie’s mood darkens as she heads into Manitoba)
The highway takes me
West and north
All skipping stones
Eventually sink
God built the world round
So middle-aged women
Could never go far enough
Superhero
(A hero, to me, anyway.)
So what did you think you were?
Lollie Singer, Superhero?
Did you imagine you could fly
Ignoring the queen’s highways
And the forever identical Taco Bell
That follows you around?
Lollie Singer!
She bestrides two cultures
Her orange kerchief flapping
In the western wind.
Watch her repeatedly polish
Those very bifocals
That surely give her X-ray vision
And that wonderful cloak of invisibility
That makes waitresses
Strangely ignore her.
Rain
(Lollie suffers a temporary emotional setback in a north Manitoba town)
There were tears in rain
Spruce mocking me.
Oh yes! Great beginnings
A whole world out there
And none of it mine
Not a speck
Not a drop
Of northern water
Not lake not river not the crying sky
This liquid promised me safety
Out past the black
hole
Beyond blue horizons
I am an old white woman
Drinking alone in a thirty-dollar cabin
While brown-skinned children outside
Kick at a ball, like they were
Dancing in the rain.
Youth
(“Like sands through the hourglass are the days of our lives.”)
Youth is the laughter of a brutal spring, elbowing
along the land, among the trees, pushing rains
and truth and warm weather ahead
It is the sound of new waters running
in old ditches. It is deceptive, however; the
sky calls the truth, that summer
comes stalking us all
panning us for gold and leaving us
with eyes turned back.
Beware youth, that laughter
in the hills is hostile
and wants no friends.
Certain as clouds is the way we are
tumbled by days
thrown to be pecked over by
the dogs of years and strewn along
these highways when the leaves
come asking forgiveness and snow sits
on every blade of grass.
Last Butterfly from Eden
(Lollie the exile.)
I am the last butterfly
From Eden
Just out, as the great iron doors
Slam closed
In a shower of rust.
Dream
(Lollie would like to know what this one means.)
In the dream
I was on a bus
Vaulting through the night
I knew, in a panic
I had to get off, and soon
But I couldn’t leave
Until I had filled out
A long questionnaire
It was in a language I couldn’t understand
Several passengers
Tried to help me, but they, too
Spoke in strange languages
I looked out the window, and saw
That long dark train
Along the horizon
Racing for the same bloody crossing.
Cages for Women
(Some things are more important than loneliness)
I was frightened of men’s eyes, but
I am tired of cages
This is a great planet, but it’s full
Of women-cages.
Some have bars
Some have a doorbell
Some are as silent as
A bedroom alone
I think
Men and women
Have not had a good history together
Except for the men
I have found more freedom
Alone in a small motel room
Than I ever knew as a
Shape
In men’s eyes
On Saturday Afternoon
(Just Lollie, doing up some Heron Feathers poems in the coffee shop)
Outside the window of Tim Hortons
It’s driving rain
Again, again, again, again
A parade of trucks and clouds, and
One old woman under a brown umbrella
Drift their long wet horizontals.
The streets are slippery and
My mind keeps trying to go home.
If you want to understand
Pour some brown coffee
Watch the skies, the trucks
The rain.
Now close your eyes and
Try to pretend you see, strangely,
One lost woman, writing poems
When you open your eyes
There will be nothing but
An empty cup, and
Words on paper
The rest of Lollie is rolling west
Along a sometime highway sky
Deep in rain.
Condensed Service Data for Lollie Heronfeathers Singer
(No-one should try to work without proper instructions.)
When to run the diagnostic test
Run this test whenever a middle-aged Lollie seems to be malfunctioning.
You can also run this test after carrying out adjustments, to see whether the above Lollie now works properly.
How to run the diagnostic test
1. Ensure the Lollie unit has sufficient space.
2. With the LHS Diagnostics menu displayed, type the number of her days, then press Doubt.
The screen shows: WHY?
and time slows down. The Lollie is now ready for you to connect to the test eschatologies.
If you do not want to test her past or biological functioning, press the No Tears key to disable them. (They will be re-enabled automatically when you terminate this Lollie test.)
The indicator above the Whatthehell key comes on.
3. Answer the following questions before proceeding:
Is life infinite?
- Is good rewarded?
- Are memories worth a pinch of coonshit?
- Is today the first day of the rest of your life?
- Have you had your morning coffee? You may need it.
4. The Lollie is moved through a fixed space as shown in Figure 3-26 (Note: Figure not available at time of publication; use road map).
5. Press the Fictional History button and set the Fantasy Level to 8. Historical accuracy is not required in this test.
Adjustments
Adjustment are not required on the Lollie Unit: the unit is self-adjusting once diagnostics are complete.
(Continued on the following page.)
Tools And Supplies Required for Non-Adjustments
To perform the non-adjustments described in this part of the manual, the following tools and supplies are required:
- $1,477.28. Use credit card (Visa) where possible. Give Lollie credit.
- Vague notions of First Nations history
- Desperate need to start again.
- Warm heart (45 mm hole in it)
- Lollie reality adjusting tool and test documents (things Lollie should have asked her mother before she died)
- One heron feather (any condition)
- Twelve Paperī¤Mate Med. Pt. blue ball-point pens
- Notebook with tear-out-crumple-and-throw-away pages (for poems)
Error Messages
There is only one valid error message; it may appear at any time during diagnostics or adjustment. The Lollie Unit may indicate improper functioning on paper or just by the stiffness of her movements.
- ODYSSEY FAILURE 00h
- Lollie hasn’t found what she was looking for. Check the connections, the cages, assorted petroglyphs, and the back row of the nearest Catholic church. If that fails, see the section, “Condensed Service Data for Lollie Heronfeathers Singer.”
Notes:
- The subject may try to create a few strange and unlikely histories at this point; ignore them - they do not affect the outcome of the test.
- The highway number maintained in doubtware is printed on the map, and the event consecutive number counter increments by 1.
- The message SIGN FROM GOD NOT FOUND does not indicate an error condition, merely an operating mode.
A Day in the Lost and Found
(Lollie takes a trip into the woods of Manitoba)
Clouds drove across the sky like
Trucks on the Don Valley Expressway.
I rented a canoe, went so far
I could not hear the chain saw
The cars roaring
For somewhere to go
My longing just too great
For this quiet girl
To postpone any more
I was looking for my losses
In the quiet lakes where pasts might
Cling like moss, in a world where secrets
Were locked in somebody else’s basement
Then almost invisible o
n smooth rock
In increasing rain
Red ochre
I reached out to touch it, it was
A hand a snake a black sky spots on the water heartbeat of eternity the silence in the woods the blood through the inner ear
“I’ll be damned,” I thought, knowing
Just maybe, now
I wouldn’t be
Upon This Rock
(Lollie ventures out alone on a northern Manitoba lake)
Had Jesus canoed
This northern lake
What strange routes
Would history take
Had he owned
A red canoe
Every pope
Would have one, too
Paddling pilgrims
Would come to gawk
At Michaelangelo's God
Painted on rock
Cathedral walls
Would be green, and sway
With sunlight blessing
All who pray
These are No Ordinary Waters
(Lollie believes she has inherited an affinity for the northern wilderness)
These are no ordinary waters,
They are wild, they all
Shelter fish
These are no ordinary rivers, underneath
Are mysteries of bass, wisdoms of carp
And lots of places to hide
These are no ordinary lakes, inside
Such boundaries are ebbs and flows
Of smell and pulse and cold, cold deeps
These are no ordinary creeks
Every one dances with life and never
Is the same ten feet downstream
These are no ordinary waters, look
Deep into any and when the movement slows
I see
Me
The Return
(Lollie’s view of the planet rotates a bit)
When I returned, I found, the sky cleared, and
The heart of the planet was beating like
An infinite drum
Tides of time lifted
The horizon of old pines
Towards a sun turning red
It was suddenly
Too late
It was suddenly
Too soon
I, a daughter
Of eight to four
Suddenly scared
Of the utter shamelessness
Of the planet
Jesus, why did you never mention
The heartbeat of old earth and
The way the horizon lifts
To the blood-red sun?
Pajamas
(As promised, Lollie sends a postcard to her son)
I carried the postcard
Addressed to my son
Two days
Edgy, puzzled
At the blank space on the back
I remembered him
At six, in pajamas
Getting on the school bus
The day I overslept.
What could I write? I felt
I was, myself
Now getting on some bus
Happy as hell
In Spiderman pajamas
Part 5: Heron Feathers Poems 2
On her way south towards the Red River Valley, Lollie writes further poems about Heron Feathers.
This set is about Heron Feathers and Jean in the Métis settlement of Red River Valley; in the early years of their marriage.
From the Stone Walls of Old Québec
(Origins of Métis)
Jean Dumont never knew
What happened to his parents
In the stone walls
Of old Québec
He scuffed the deep stoneless