“Dovdna is a very simple joik that the child can easily recognize.”
~ Elin Kåven & Jungle Svonni
with ancestors clutching hands nearby.
I was born with eyes splashed
with the witness of distant stars.
Born as morning slipped
from night into the neighborhood,
as the doe leaped through the still silhouette
of the barn tree and ran down the dirt road.
Born to conjure glaciers into a traditional
song with sound drawn on coastlines.
And here I am, new from mask of night,
somewhere between sunset and gray light,
where I’ve burrowed out from beneath
the dreams my ancestor women have chanted up
to inhabit this present shape, to inhabit
this rain drenched day intoned with
silt-laden words, like wind over grassflats.
* Elin Kåven & Jungle Svonni, of Beneath the Northern Lights, are my first yoik (joik) teachers.