The rains come,
With the season.
Soft & tepid;
‘Ere hard & fast.
In my bush days,
Trudging through mud up to our knees.
Temperate Rainforests,
We once called home.
Foreign to many,
Sacred to some.
Rather follow in the footsteps,
Of the first nations elders –
Who shared their wisdom.
Knowing my duty,
Then.
As a teacher.
My own “Once Upon A Time.”
Consuming every scrap of knowledge –
Offered forth.
To gift forward,
Unto my charges.
To keep,
As an eidetic database –
To protect it from ongoing Cultural Genocides.
Learned to much prefer some Coastal Salish,
Ways of doing things.
Learned in unexpected places,
As always.
Parking lots –
After work.
Listening to the wit,
Or humor,
For hours.
Told in histories of community.
What is my responsibility,
Now?
Holding secrets –
No longer playing at guru.
Perhaps it is my admiration,
Of community –
I must emulate.
Every extended community member,
Becomes an auntie,
Or uncle.
Carrying the responsibility of care;
For our youth.
What should I do,
Now?
No longer the mentor,
Struggling through the system.
Trapped in the very institutionalism,
That fucked them over.
Often struggle,
To forget.
Especially after remembering.
Fuck my feelings!
It’s never about me.
What acts of service,
Are now necessary?
Must I play uncle,
Even still?
At least to those I mentored,
Educated,
Before I removed that hat?
Where does the burden of responsibility lie?
How many times,
Have I done my best?
Playing at foster father,
To those without role models.
Which messiah complex,
Must I burn out of my arteries?
What grandiosity –
Can I purge?
This martyr syndrome,
Was never designed to be pointed inwards.
Only outwards.
Exponential echoes of critical thinking,
In the hopes of saving a species.
Perhaps that is a penance,
We must still pay,
All my wayward selves.
Thinking my efforts in future exponentials,
Of a student body,
Could ever match what I could do alone.
Sins are burdens,
We carry.
I’ll pay the price for abandoning them,
In every word I ever write.
Long after I die.
Trapped in a steel cage,
Pour,
Rain.
Wash away the freshest blood,
“So we can see,
What we’re working with –
Here tonight.”
Damn my Blood Curse!
Fuck this broken eidetic mechanism!
The mist & cloud,
Hangs low over the mountains –
Elevation dictating snow lines.
Ecologies churning away in frenzy.
We remain insignificant.
So these quandaries are useless.
Poems to mourn the dead students,
I watched buried from afar.
This madness,
Is the thread directly through the heart.
The act of living,
Incarnate.
Watching eternal cycles,
Of nature –
Has gifted me the power of longsight,
Perhaps.
So which wisdoms,
Must I pass on?
Which knowledge,
Must be held sacred?
I always forgot to ask,
In soaking it all in.
Much prefer the vibes,
Giving as power.
Community as focus.
Help those who need helping.
Perhaps immigrant blood,
Can see that story –
Told in hurt.
Echoing in suffering.
Evergreens loom,
Rarely changing.
Borrowed homelands.
Stolen homelands.
Penance isn’t just an act,
It seems.
Rather an evolving idealism itself.
Changing over time.
Spring will come again,
Flowers in bloom.
Cottonwood pollen,
Like snow.
Might be I’ll leave this place,
For good.
Must I still play uncle,
Even then?
Or does the land itself hold onto my curse?
Pulling massive steel chains,
Affixed to my seal of imprisonment.
Fine.
Promise here & now,
I’ll pay penance –
When penance is due.
Holding steady interest,
Upon borrowed secrets.
Different worldviews or cultures.
Only the greatest of cedars,
May judge me.
Temperate Rainforests.
