Wauwaset

I feel at one with the drift.

The wind-swept powder that fills by mouth.

I swallow it whole, the wind in my chest.

I grasp for air; the breath was just there a minute ago.

With every step I feel massive, I feel heavy, with feet made of stone.

Not the stone that I skipped in the river with my brothers.

But the boulders that were unmovable.

So much so the river made way for.

I hope my mother is still waiting for me.

I will be there soon.

The clouds have begun to rage their sharp specks at me.

I cannot escape the gravity.

The gravity of my life.

I will be there soon.

Once upon a time, there was no earth, only a vast realm of water below and sky above. The first people lived above the sky, for they could not live on water. One day, the sky opened up and through the hole fell a beautiful young woman and a tree. Two swans swam over to her, gently lifted her onto their backs, and took her to the Great Turtle. Turtle called all animals to a council, and when they gathered in a circle, he told them of the Woman Fallen from the Sky, and the tree with earth on its roots. He commanded them to bring up the tree from the water, and plant it on his great back, so that the woman could live there. After two unsuccessful attempts by Otter and Beaver to retrieve the tree, Muskrat dove down and stayed down for a very long time. When he surfaced, he came up with the tree and a mouthful of earth, which he spit out onto Turtle’s back. There the tree grew, bending down one of its branches to root in the earth, and from this branch sprang the first man who together with the woman would bring forth future generations of people on Turtle Island.

At one time there were seven wise men who lived among the people. They were so wise that the people would constantly come to them, day and night. It got so bad that the seven men decided, “We have to get away. We need to have some peace. We can’t have people coming to our wikewams everyday and asking us myriads of questions.” So what they did was they decided, “We’ll go away from the village a little up into the mountain and turn ourselves into boulders, big rocks. “ And everything was fine but one day this one young man was out hunting and he happened to see these seven boulders that were a little different than any rocks he had ever seen before. So he started coming back to them every day and eventually he found that if he whispered to the rocks, the rocks would talk back to him. He was shocked. But, the rocks were answering his questions. Well, it wasn’t long before he went back to thestarted village and told the people about these seven wonderful stones that they could ask questions to. So the people leaving the village and coming up the mountain to the seven rocks. So soon the seven wise men said, “We’ve got to change. We’ve got to get away. We’ve had no peace here now.