If the Songs Were Braided

 I know where the roots begin.

I know they all come from my father’s side..

the Lenape rivers,

the Manahoac hills,

the Haudenosaunee paths

woven through forests I have never walked.

I carry them in my veins,

but I do not know

whether your names were passed

through the hands of women

or the tongues of men.

I do not know

if your stories belonged to mothers or fathers,

if the songs were braided into matrilineal memory

or carved into paternal stone.

What I do know is this:

my father tread carefully,

and my grandfather before him,

moving through the edges of belonging

like men who remembered

what could be taken.

Even at gatherings,

powwows pulsing with drum and fire,

they stayed to the quiet edges,

watching,

listening,

carrying a reverence

heavier than their words would ever say.

I think they knew what was sacred,

and also what was fragile.

I feel you in those silences.

In the spaces where no one spoke,

I hear the echoes...

ribbons sliding through fingers,

deer hides worked soft against stone,

beaver and rabbit shaped into warmth

when winter threatened bone.

I hear you in the scrape of metal tools

against flesh and fur,

in the sewing of skirts

heavy with prayer and pattern,

in the quiet ceremonies of making

when words were not allowed.

I have seen you in fragments.

In beadwork held like language.

In medicines whispered from root to hand.

In cedar smoke curling through air

like a memory refusing to dissolve.

I have smelled your stories in crushed sage,

in the sweetness of honeysuckle

and the bitter edge of wildflower stems.

I have tasted you in honey on the tongue,

in teas steeped for healing,

in quiet bowls of lentils

that carried more care than anyone said aloud.

I know why my father was cautious.

I know why my grandfather was quiet.

There were pieces of you

they could not explain

and were not allowed to name.

They carried their knowing like embers,

careful not to fan the flame

in a world that had already taken so much.

But they gave me just enough 

enough to feel you in the rivers,

enough to hear you in the wind,

enough to know

that the marrow in my bones

remembers what my tongue does not.

And so I make 

perfumes like earth after rain,

stones threaded into small altars,

words pressed into poems

like beads into skin.

I make because it is the only way I know

to keep you breathing through me.

I return to the land,

to the rivers,

to the wildflowers and fur and cedar...

not to take,

but to listen.

I do not know if my place

would have been counted

through my father

or through my mother.

But I know this:

I am counted.

The earth knows me.

The rivers know me.

The wind carries my name

back to the ones who walked before.

And when I am asked

who I am,

I will open my hands,

let the soil rest in my palms,

and say:

I am theirs.

And they are mine.

Even if I was never taught the songs,

I carry their fire anyway.