These wonderful selections from Shirley M. Flowers
I Wonder by Shirley M. Flowers
I wonder about times long, long ago
Before there were stores, and vinyl sided homes
Before the churches and freight ships and passenger planes and alcohol
When ten grandmothers back and ten grandfathers back
My ancestors lived on the coast of Labrador.
How did they live from day to day?
What did they talk about?
Did they gossip about their closest neighbors who probably lived miles away?
How did they discipline their children?
Did they ground them and tell them
“ You can’t skip rocks today”?
Where did they walk and pick their berries?
Have I ever picked a berry that came from those same seeds of long ago?
Have I ever stepped where one of them may have stepped?
Are my feet the same shape or size of one of my old relatives?
What kind of rituals did they practice?
What was the language that they spoke?
Does my laughter sound like any of them?
What food was their favorite?
Was it fish like mine is?
What songs did they sing?
And what stories did they tell?
Were the songs about the love of life, their tragedies and celebrations?
Were the stories tales of lessons to remember, and entertainment?
How did their personalities differ?
Was one of them like my brother or my daughter?
What were the laws that they lived by?
Who made the laws?
What were their celebrations?
How did they name the children?
How did they give thanks?
Did they give back to nature by respecting and taking only what was needed?
Who cured the ills and tended to the sick?
And who trained them to be the medicine people?
Who made decisions?
Were the decisions challenged and overturned?
How did they feel when big changes came upon them?
Did they welcome these changes and were they hopeful for the future?
I know the land has scarcely changed
The animals still look the same
The snow and ice, the moon, the sky
Are still the same and inside I am somewhat the same
To be as close to them as I want I need only to look inside my heart and soul
Some changes are with me and what I choose to do and be.
1 comment:
Reading this was so moving that it brought tears. A long time ago when the
old ways still prevailed , I spent some time in Labrador, not long ,but
long enough to discover for myself something of its mystery that many have
tried to describe but where only poets succeed, and which has captivated
the soul of everyone who has experienced it: There are really no words to
convey the awesome stillness that broods o'er the evening landscape ,
evoking , as the sun disappears in west, the wonder , the vastness and the
primal beauty of this still mysterious land, and the enchantment of the
dwellers whose lives are at one with it, in body and in soul.
L.C.R.
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