Otipemisiwak

maybe Poundmaker

or even Big Bear

would have dreamt

those waking figures

Gatlin gun sorrows

bullets, crosses and misguided soldiers

if they were Riel

or Dumont

while Macdonald

swilling spirits

was in some crystal case of glory

and Louis dreamt

that supposedly

in broad daylight

the dawn

on its unseen bone

was lifting

above the fire

I don’t believe

he was merely mistaken

regardless of

how little daylight remained

this evening

I retrieved a piece of birch bark

and something more

like a petrified limb

lay in the palm of a snowdrift

I thought of Louis

the way he kept envisioning

what was inside the dimness

how he dreamt of it ascending

on its unseen limb

how he wanted it to reflect

like water

Otipemisiwak: the Free People