The Sky Watched by Linda LeGarde Grover

Author:Linda LeGarde Grover [Grover, Linda LeGarde]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: POE015000 POETRY / American / Native American, SOC021000 SOCIAL SCIENCE / Ethnic Studies / American / Native American Studies, SOC053000 SOCIAL SCIENCE / Regional Studies
Publisher: University of Minnesota Press
Published: 2022-10-25T00:00:00+00:00

III

Anishinaabewi

The Refugees

To the dirging of “The Way We Were”

sung by some sweet girl nobody knows

six pallbearers

two in sweatshirts with faded logos

three in dress shirts, one with a tie

and one in a borrowed sportcoat

carry above their bowlegged lockstep mince

the green flocked vinyl coffin out the side door.

Inside she reposes, beloved mother, grandmother, aunt,

megis shell on a black string

wound over her bent brown fingers.

Six pallbearers worn as their boot heels

and ground to unassuming humility

by rounds of looking for work

and sometimes finding it gravely

wear their bodies as a single suit of clothes

fraying fast and worn at the knees.

These are faces of outside work, aging young skin

tanned by the sun and creased

ever more deeply season to season

filled and emptied filled and emptied

with grime and hard living

that search then escape what they’d found

spending night after night on a stool at Mr. J’s

thinking, maybe after one more

I’ll ask that blonde or her friend to dance;

no, guess I’ll just go home, after all.

This is what happened to the other Indians,

not the airbrush-tanned noble savages you watch

on made-for-TV movies, running

in crisp, freshly ironed loincloths

through a pristine forest full of friendly animals

with an important message for the Chief

from his daughter the Princess,

who enthrall you so with their primitive ways

Oh wow these people are just so close to nature,

so SPEAR-itual (I wannabe, I wanna have)

that you can buy at a craft show stand

along with some gen-you-whine faux turquoise

jewelry so that you can be an Indian, too.

No, we’re the other Indians,

the ones who did time in boarding school

where we learned to take a beating

never quite mastered the use of forced English

learned the work ethic and what it meant for us

but survived, more or less, in spite of it.

We moved to town, refugees we became

displaced persons scorned sometimes by our own.

Our daughters married white men

and learned to take a beating

never quite mastered Anglo housekeeping

lived the work ethic, and for them it meant

they would grow old early, our daughters

beloved and revered the bearers of life

and generations to come

how could we protect them, our daughters

whose bodies and spirits tired and whose

blue-eyed children went to public school

where they learned to take a beating

as well as give a beating in turn

never really mastered schoolwork,

leaving when they turned sixteen,

having learned what the work ethic meant for them

so they too could live hard and grow old early.

And today we’re at another funeral,

and since it’s the mortuary’s rock-bottom budget

package deal we move outside the Sunset Chapel

once our hour is up. We’re grateful

for this warm and sunny afternoon

and for room on the sidewalk

for cousins to meet and talk

(“Ain’t seen you since the last funeral”)

till the chapel needs the sidewalk back

and we head for Mr. J’s.

In repose our beloved is gone;

she has traveled her four-day spirit walk,

overcome her travails, and arrived west.

Her body waits in a green flocked vinyl coffin

on a shelf in the mortuary’s garage

for the off-hours ride to the cemetery,

megis shell on a black string

wound over her bent brown fingers.

Gi gawaabimin, auntie.

We will see each other again sometime.

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