Mashkiki, this Medicine Earth
beyond mask, abundance for ailing human souls.
Oh sweet glimmer—white frost a sprinkle on winter prairie,
marshland a glazed and ghostly paradise where ice crackles
echo and echo across the expanse of its mirrored floor.
Here we small, we holy disappear into etched ice patterns;
swallowed by reflection, we trace belonging skin to skin.
Like land inscribed, we harbor stories, walk each ancient pathway
where tribal mounds still rise, hallowed and endless as copper memory.
In this curved alcove of sandy shoreline waterfowl dive and feed and bob.
We pledge allegiance to the water—nibi relations wet and blessed.
Here a rock point stretches black into winter water,
this outcropping a gesture, an arrow we follow.
Then abracadabra! Each round rock suddenly plump and feathered,
a gathering of dark knowledge rising.
Oh, shelf of duck
launching into air!
Like the sigh
from my lips—
the song.
Praise the peninsula of
human body.
We surrounded
by gifts of water
breathing plants
this healing earth:
Aki
our
sacred
our
medicine—
m
a
s
h
k
i
k
i.
