"Remember Me Won't You?"

I run the shores of the coast almost in panic.
I need to find him, breathless, I finally see him.
Ignoring the test of time, there he sits.
Trickling in the salty veins of this bone-carver
Runs the blood of cedar-bark shamans.
His lineage spans two continents,
But his love and loyalty is to this land.
The land of his Mother, and her Mother.
The viridian sprawl of the skyward mountains,
Inlet streams, and the many, lodge-poled villages
That stood up under these coastal rains.

This is Percy Paul, my old friend.
He sits by the ocean’s edge carving bones.
He whittles memories of his ancestry.
There is irony in his sculpted treasures.
Each day he squats on the shoreline of this island,
Carving thighbones and skulls, out of need.
So sad, the desecration of the very same animals,
That so long ago fed his people, and now feeds him again.
Sadly, these will only sell for tobacco money,
Becoming someone’s forgotten souvenir,
Sitting on a shelf in some far off land.

I have come to him to seek guidance, to share.
He has a way with one touch of cauterizing pain.
He knows it well, for he has truly lived it.
As I approach him, he smiles a toothless grin,
And I know instinctively he knew I was coming.
I feel sandpaper rake my hands, and I squeeze harder.
His was a life of living, fighting, and loving.
Oh what stories he tells, and like a child
I want to hear it all again, all of it.
Without a word, we walk, almost on tiptoe,
As he points a bony finger here and there
Showing his respect, not wanting to disturb.
He pulls up daisies and puts them by a small marker,
That only he knows the hiding place.

We reach the old log cabin of his memories.
I sit in the clutter of his entire lifetime.
He pours tea and begins to tell me the stories,
Stories I had heard one hundred times.
My eyes never slow, in this room of artifacts,
I can’t take all of his surroundings in fast enough.
He talks of his big city long shoring days,
The sickness, the terrible workmates, where
Sweat, calamity and laughter made men or broke them.

I see that familiar single tear escape as he bows his head.
It falls onto his threadbare shirt, smelling of the sea.
I look at his map-riddled face and eyes in wonderment.
His mind and soul are a world I want so badly to travel.
A face so, weathered, and shellacked from life.
He smiles as he catches me glancing in sweet sorrow.
His incredibly gentle voice caresses my very being.
Those gritty memories as he speaks once again of
A girl with hair as shiny as raven’s feathers, so slim,
So beautiful, and shy that he made her his wife.
They took up household on a lumber ship.
My inquiring blue eyes, led to his usual response,
“Honey, that is what they did in those days.”

Now time has distilled his very essence
To that of a small, brown, scant-wrinkled,
Shadow of the man that once was a warrior.
But if you look deep into his eyes, you see his soul.
Visions of the potlatches, his chiefdom,
His sons, his Father, the community of spirit.
The singing that forged the treacherous
Seas north and south of Port Hardy
Where men were made or broken.

His small eyes look right into mine,
He says, “she is okay, she wants you to know that”.
“You have a lot of living to do, so do it honey.”
I begin to softly cry, as he cradles me.
Like the little girl I used to be, now I am again.
And like the strong, brave shaman he was, he now is.
Once again, he has healed my broken heart.
After a night of visions, and dreams,
The city once again beckons me, and I wonder
Next year will my bone carver be here?
As we walk to the Ferry, he says softly,
“Remember me won’t you?”

by Mysteria © 07/2001
music:"The Old Ones"