I watched the ocean. I look down and see the giant foot steps on the sand... I
watch the ocean.
The Shaman says, “Drink the earth.”
I do.
I take the red blood of earth and paint myself. I taste it. It makes me ready
for the battle to come. The earth is my mother and she feeds me. The ocean is
my want, for I want to be free as the seals, dolphins, and the whales—my
brothers and sisters in this age.
Then the trespassers come from the sea in their strange, winged canoes. They
wonder shivering upon my land.
How strangely white they are, with long yellow hair and faces full of the sun.
My dreams tell me to eat earth.
This is my protection. It makes me invincible. Perfect.
Then I stumble across this stone with it’s riddles. I puzzle it. Strangely it
looks at me with words or at least that is the “movie version” one thousand
years from now. I eat more earth. I paint my body. The elders say,
“This is the way.”
There is no language for the disease. No language. I’m red with the pox is all.
I look out at the ocean. I look out at the ocean. I stare into the empty sky. I
stare at the ocean. I fever for the ocean. I crave the sea. I think of
clamshells
and oysters. I crave the shad that brings my maize to life. I hunger for the
cod that I can pick from the ocean like fruit from a tree.
You wonder where the yellow went when you brush your teeth with Pepsident don’t
you?
I paint my face with red earth and look out at the sea. It slips out of my
mind. I taste the ocean.
It laps across my face
In marvelous waves.
They call me “Red”.
Fools.
I look at the giant foot steps. I wonder about them.red earth…
Something lingers,
And something is gained here.
I don’t know what though.
I am remembered
And I am lost
All at the same point and
All at the same time.
“Pox. Pox upon thee,” is all they say.
My village died. My nation died all to the invisible ghosts.
Then they tramped upon my shores while I watched the ocean, huddled and wrapped
in fever blankets, hungry for life, blood and liberty.
Now, in fading I watch the ocean, hungry for its bounty.
Five hundred years hence the same menace stalks us. Yellow beards and pale
skinned women walk the shoreline and find our villages of death, our children
dead. Our stores of corn sustain them through the terrible winter. They steal
from our ancestors and from the dead amongst us. Then they celebrate this
another five hundred years later as a Thanksgiving to their god.
Now, my beliefs are called crazy, savage and weird.
I peak beyond the curtain of death that has long since wrapped my eyes and
comforts my dead bones.
I again watch the ocean from my perch upon the cliffs with wanting for the
balance of things and with a hunger for justice.
My hunger lingers deep inside of all of us. My thirst is also relentless. My
story must live on. Oh, but it does in all the injustice in this world of today.
So I continue to watch the ocean to reclaim me and all of my sisters and
brothers.
For my soul is Mic Mac. My soul is long. My earth is consummated and my seas
are despoiled by the yellow beards with fierce swords and dagger mouths. Still,
I’m never ending so long as memory is held in earth and water. Still, I’m never
ending so long as my story is told.
A thousand years from then I stand, pale skinned and shivering in the freezing
rain at what the Pilgrims say is “Plymouth Rock” mournful over what my European
bros have sent us all. I chant for my ochre laden brothers and sisters chant
for while drums beat for justice. I see a clump of red earth by a stone
overlooking the forlorn sea, crashing angry against the beach below. Prince
Phillip’s ghost arises amongst us with his head upon an English pike to
celebrate the slaughter of us who saved us from our savage ways as those yellow
beards say.
Now, once again I watch the ocean with both hunger and thirst, but with
memories quenched. I hunger and thirst no more so long as our story is told.
