The Minor Odyssey of Lollie Heronfeathers Singer Read online

The Minor Odyssey of Lollie Heronfeathers Singer

  By Lenny Everson

  rev 1

  Copyright Lenny Everson 2011

  For Dianne, my paddle-partner

  This free ebook may be copied, distributed, reposted, reprinted and shared, provided it appears in its entirety without alteration, and the reader is not charged to access it.

  Cover design by Lenny Everson

  ****

  For Dianne

  ****

  Introduction

  This is an entertainment. Nothing more.

  It does not claim to be history, ethnology, or anything else. Any connection to real life is coincidental at best and sheer accident at worst.

  Lollie and all the other people you’ll meet in this book are products of the imagination of myself, a white male.

  Lenny Everson

  Biography of Lollie Heronfeathers Singer

  Lollie was born south of Weyburn, Saskatchewan, but was raised in Sudbury and Toronto.

  Her “Aboriginal” middle name was acquired when she was four. At a river north of Sudbury her father had gone fishing. She wandered away, and was found sitting by the water, petting a heron (unheard-of behavior for these birds). The bird flew away when her parents came, but she saved three feathers, and for years steadfastly refused to give them up.

  Her parents called her “feathers” while she was a child, as a family joke.

  It was when she turned forty-five, and became a divorced casualty of the modern age that she started to look into her ancestry. Her mother (who died when Lollie was young) had told her that she was of Métis background, from the Red River area of Manitoba. She had both French-Canadian and Cree ancestors. (Her father told her the Singer family had started in Poland, coming to Canada before the turn of the last century.)

  This is a journey she’s started only after much thought; she’s afraid of finding herself torn between two cultures (as the Métis must have been, or the native Canadians now are). She makes the journey physically, not always finding what she wants to see, and also in her poetry, which doesn’t always take her to places she thought she wanted to go.

  Her poems are based on her trip and her vision of an imaginary ancestor, Heron Feathers, She knows a bit of the history of the Cree, their migration to the prairies from the forest of Ontario, the coming of the French, and the attempt to found a Métis nation.

  In her minor odyssey, Lollie visits a northern Ontario town and meets a Cree, Tom Small Wolf, who practices the ancient rituals. He takes her on an overnight canoe trip to see some ancient petroglyphs. She is unmoved by the experience.

  After that she drives to central Manitoba, where she despairs of her journey. But then takes herself on another canoe trip. by herself. This time, she finds petroglyphs which do affect her.

  Finally, following the trail of her imaginary ancestor, she travels to the prairie lands of southern Manitoba, where the Métis settled in the Red River Valley. There she spends time with Lucy, a Métis, who tells her the history of her people.

  These are her poems, about both her own journey and that of her mythological ancestor, Heron Feathers, a Cree woman who joins with a French-Canadian, Jean Dumont, and moves with him to the Red River. Lollie’s knowledge of the history, ethnology. and religion of the Métis and Cree is pretty minimal, but she doesn’t care. Dissatisfied with her own life, she is determined to redo it through poems about her mythical creation.

  The whole odyssey takes place in Lollie’s 45th year, in the month of September.

  Lollie’s Odyssey

  In this journey, Lollie, a middle-aged white woman

  - Starts out depressed and backward-looking.

  - Decides on a quest.

  - Argues with her son about the journey.

  - Leaves with optimism.

  - Gets to know a Cree medicine man in northern Ontario. He teaches her about native religion.

  - Tries a canoe journey on her own out of a village in Manitoba. There she has a profound experience on finding a petroglyph site.

  - Begins a fictional biography of Heron Feathers, a Cree ancestor who takes up with a French trader.

  - Visits a Métis woman along the Red River, who tells her about the Métis.

  - Returns home.

  Heron Feathers, the creation of Lollie Singer

  - Grows up on Cree land, in the deep forests of northern Ontario

  - Meets a French-Canadian Courier de Bois in 1835

  - Goes with him to settle on the Red River Valley of Manitoba, on the edge of the great plains

  Other Incidents Described

  - the first migration of the Cree into prairie landscape

  Other Characters

  Lloyd Davies: Former husband

  John Davies: Son.

  Tom Small Wolf.: Age 50. Lives in Loon Bay. Raised Christian, but is relearning, and teaching the old ways.

  Lucy Bonneau: Métis woman

  George Bonneau: Lucy’s brother

  Heron Feathers: Lollie’s fictional Cree ancestor

  Jean Dumont: Lollie’s fictional Coureur de Bois ancestor

  Loon Bay: Small community in north-west Ontario.

  Palmer Falls: Small community in north-central Manitoba.

  Notre Dame du Portage: Town in southern Manitoba

  Contents

  Part 1: The Beginning

  Even the Sun Goes West

  When the Words Stopped

  Don’t Wait Too Long

  People of the Wind

  Asking for Better Hues

  Snakes

  Bulletin Board

  The Quarry

  Woman Winters

  Snowdreams

  But He’s a Good Boy, Anyway

  Not Because

  Part 2: Loon Lake

  I Think I Might Have Changed My Mind About the Whole Thing

  Minnehaha

  Landfall

  Travel

  Jerusalem

  The Puzzle

  Ten Little Indians

  Peter, Water, and Church

  The Canoe Becomes the Passage

  Solid Rock, Creator’s Touch

  Last Time We Came to Ground

  Some Ancient Arts Survive

  Out by Otter Lake

  Three Haikus About Noise

  Music by the Lake

  The Foolish and the Brave

  Ravens I have Met

  Part 3: Heron Feathers Poems 1

  Under the Infinite Ceiling

  More Hills, More Trees

  Sister Talk

  Only Because

  The Touch

  Far Lands, Strange Customs

  The Parting

  Part of Some River

  Come and Share the World

  Only the Wind Knows a Woman’s True Name

  Lesson

  The Show

  Part 4: North-Central Manitoba

  Highway

  Superhero

  Rain

  Youth

  Last Butterfly from Eden

  Dream

  Cages for Women

  On Saturday Afternoon

  Condensed Service Data for Lollie Heronfeathers Singer

  When to run the diagnostic test

  How to run the diagnostic test

  Adjustments

  Tools And Supplies Required for Non-Adjustments

  Error Messages

  A Day in the Lost and Found

  Upon This Rock

  These are No Ordinary Waters

  The Return

  Pajamas

  Part 5: Heron Feathers Poems 2

  From the Stone Walls of Old Québec

>   Belief

  When You are Not With Me

  Out of a Prairie Thunderstorm

  Heron Feathers and Rabbit Trails

  The Reason Why

  The Church

  A Remarriage

  Part 6: The Red River Valley

  Precipice

  The Transformation

  Not Far Enough

  Rivers

  Shopworn

  I Guess I’m a Métis

  Fiddlesticks

  Second Sight

  To Birches

  Taking a Trip to the Past

  Let There Be Pencil

  If There Were No Death

  Words

  Reaching for Heaven

  She’s determined to believe

  When They Hanged Him

  The Unpeople

  George’s Lament

  Lucy’s Reply to George

  But the Weeds Come Back

  At the Legion on Bleeker Street

  Nails on Sale Today

  Bridge

  Partly

  By the Red River

  Afternoons

  Part 7: Heron Feathers Poems 3

  Remembering the Songs

  Home is Where the Hugs Were

  Voices

  Bones

  Mud and Stars

  Part 8: The Journey Home

  Woman of the Wind

  Exile

  Dawn

  Ashes

  Where Do the Gods Go

  The River

  The Clowns

  Why We Write Poems

  Part 1: The Beginning

  This is Lollie before she starts on her journey, up to the point where she’s driving north.

  She’s been inspired to write a few poems about the immense changes her ancestors, the Cree, must have gone through when some bands moved from the deep woods to the open prairie.

  It is the thought of their courage, as much as anything, that gets her moving in her own life.

  Even the Sun Goes West

  (Migration of the Cree from the deep woods of northern Ontario to the open plains)

  Late winter in Our Forest, long cold

  No rabbits, no fish, no moose;

  Wendigos walking the sprucewoods.

  It put Loonlaugh, the shaman, into the

  Shaking tipi two days, desperate for

  Spirit advice.

  He came out alive, said we would go

  To the land of no trees, then vomited

  Under a thin birch. No-one laughed this time.

  Brightsun swore at him, saying the

  Great North Wind had taken him, and

  Filled him with lies. “On the prairie

  The North Wind will eat us each winter, and

  The Nez Perce will walk on our bones.

  And who can catch a buffalo?

  I think we should get a new shaman.”

  My mother, She-Who-Feeds-Birds, looked

  Around at the other women in despair.

  But I walked to a rock,

  Peeled off some lichens, and

  Went to the men. I chewed the lichens

  In front of them.

  “My daughter is hungry,” mother said.

  The men started to protest, but

  All the women turned to face the west

  Staying there all night

  Watching the stars climb down to the land of winds.

  When the Words Stopped

  (When a relationship is in trouble, the words get fewer. When the words stop, someone’s packing a suitcase.)

  When the words stopped

  My world became the empty tarmac

  Of a long-abandoned airport

  The hangars leaning

  A paper coffee cup from yesterday’s traffic

  Blowing by

  To be left in silence

  Is a violence of emptiness

  A world without words

  For me

  Is the sun going down

  The gray dusk washing in.

  I was born the biological entity

  Of companionship

  Needing touch occasionally, and

  Always

  Kind words

  When the words stopped

  The cold and distant stars

  Took vengeance against

  This woman

  Don’t Wait Too Long

  (The Ticking Clock Affects Lollie’s dreams)

  I didn’t know what to do when

  That indigo train came hurtling

  Out of the darkness

  Of my dream

  Again

  I woke to the feel of iron

  Pounding granite. I guess

  Some days I am white, feet crushing granite

  Someday I may be brown, becoming an eagle

  The shaking was only my heart

  Fran, distant friend

  Died last week.

  Elizabeth, cousin,

  Has arthritis, real bad

  I saw a Grosbeak in summer

  Wrong place, bird

  You should be up north

  In the silence of tamarack

  Every now and again

  I see that train at night

  Running down a maverick moose

  On a lonely track

  Among the poplars

  Always poplars

  The moonlight on its flanks

  The train always dark

  As the grave.

  People of the Wind

  (migration of the Cree from the deep woods of northern Ontario to the open plains)

  We became the people

  Of the wind

  Wind brought us

  To the coulees

  Blew in the buffalo

  Scattered sweetgrass smoke

  Howled in the oldgrass moon

  And left us silent

  Hearing footsteps

  Of bad spirits

  On nights

  When only the children

  Dared sleep

  We could deal with the spirits

  Of the spruce woods

  We had a thousand legends

  Of bear and loon

  But we are all silent

  When a crane circles

  Eight times in the morning

  And the wind dies

  Unexpectedly

  Asking for Better Hues

  (Maybe Outdoor Life would be a better choice.)

  We paint the images of photos

  Upon our aging faces

  Time creeps up, taps our heels

  With bland eyes and crooked smile

  It holds out a whitewashed hand

  Asking for better hues

  We hand him the card.

  He tests it with mossy teeth

  “Not much credit left!” he whispers, and

  Laughing at the helpless stars

  Scuttles away for a day or two

  We turn the pages of Chatelaine

  Trying not to notice

  Scratching sounds

  Behind the chair.

  Snakes

  (first rumours of the French coming to the plains)

  They all gathered rattlesnakes

  Except the women who either

  Weren’t allowed, or

  Maybe knew better

  And the young children

  Who followed the young men

  With long willow sticks

  Poking into crevices where the wind

  Bared rock to the sun

  They all gathered rattlesnakes

  For the shaman, Blind Wolf

  Who wasn’t a wolf most of the time

  And seldom blind

  He scowled most of them back

  To rolling prairie valleys

  They left the rattlesnake on a rock

  Tail-less coiled belly to the sun a

  Purple-dyed ribbon

  Around its head

  Its rattle in the old man’s broken hand

  Its soul in his throat
<
br />   He shook three futures out:

  The buffalo were many

  The winter would be short

  But far into the sunrise, even the wolves

  Were learning fear

  Bulletin Board

  (Lollie summarizes her life)

  - Climbed that hill in the early October frost

  - Would not have changed that day in the long grass, but

  - Cried when I saw how frost curled the leaves of the poplars

  - Spring and love compel each other

  - We women create our men then try to shield them from the winter

  - Big mistake

  - Like leaves, sliding down my face

  - Lloyd, former husband, twenty-three years, four months

  - You’re looking for a last line. There isn’t one

  -

  The Quarry

  (From Lollie, for all poets)

  Soft and wide in the morning

  the nets go out

  as fine as

  spiderwebs

  Hung from limb

  tied to tree

  staked deep and looped round

  solid granite rock

  they cover the road

  where night meets day

  Out of a night

  of angel flights

  the quarry comes

  to seek the daily

  sunshine husk

  And nights and lights

  and Barbie dolls

  years and fears

  pale pink walls

  woven into

  finest mesh

  It happens quite often like this

  After the escape, the net

  must be woven again

  finer yet

  Last night I remembered a birthday party

  when I was twelve.

  This was added

  to tighten the mesh

  In the morning light

  with nets drawn tight

  once again

  I wait for me.

  Woman Winters

  (migration of the Cree from the deep woods of northern Ontario to the open plains)

  The year the buffalo did not come

  The men grumbled, rode out

  Came back with a few rabbits

  Some prairie chickens, no dignity

  So they got louder

  Ignored the children

  Later that year

  We ate coyote

  More bothered by angered spirits

  Than tough flesh

  The shaman burned mushrooms

  But the Grandfather Spirit

  Appeared to my father’s sister

  Gathering cattail roots

  He came as a laughing wolf

  Then she knew we women

  Would keep the tribe alive

  Dried roots, rabbit pemmican

  And a long wait in cold snow

  Bad winters are women winters

  Snowdreams

  (Lollie plans)

  “Great day for traveling,” you think at me

  March snow scudding past the windows

  Of my ice-covered home and

  The thermometer into a crisis of negativity

  But let me tell you I’ve crossed more lands in a Canadian

  Winter than I ever got to in the summers.

  While the neighbour’s scraping ice from my doorstep

  And the mailman’s hiding in the coffee shop

  I’m sitting by a campfire

  Listening to ancient stories

  In my mind

  And somewhere, someone

  Smiles, just in case

  I’m a cousin

  Twelve steps removed

  Only a handshake from kinship

  Only a Trans-Canada highway from truth

  But He’s a Good Boy, Anyway