Grandmother Horseside
Posted: December 22nd, 2012, 8:26 am
o Grandmother Horseside! Remember I loved to hear you speak of your limestone headquarters in the old days when the Indians had their fishing camps up along the river.
It was way better than school to me - you touching down on the outcrops with that beaded bag that held your knife suspended from your neck and that rabbit fur pouch that rode your hip -
how you built your camp from the eyeballs of deer just southwest of your heart and then you walking straight into the forest from there to search for things to make into glass because you said pottery was for the Navajos but glass was where the real action was.
You even caught fish with hooks made from glass. Everybody was amazed & jealous and gossiped that you took dark spirits and maybe even wendigo skookums into your bed to get your magic.
You was a bad bitch grandmother Indian standing among the junk cars with the wind making ripples of your thin dress - I saw that photograph and there were stacks of worn tires and axles and an old truck up on blocks behind you -
I swore then never to own land but to always mind the wind.
I heard the story from the lips of my second cousin how when she asked you if she could bring flowers to your grave and what kind would you like you told her no flowers - you said, "Bring me a can of soup"
I was a grown even an old man when I first heard that story - I went right out from my second cousin and to the store and bought you a can of bean soup and I went to your grave in the old cemetery and left it at the bottom of your stone...
you noticed it, I'm sure.
It was way better than school to me - you touching down on the outcrops with that beaded bag that held your knife suspended from your neck and that rabbit fur pouch that rode your hip -
how you built your camp from the eyeballs of deer just southwest of your heart and then you walking straight into the forest from there to search for things to make into glass because you said pottery was for the Navajos but glass was where the real action was.
You even caught fish with hooks made from glass. Everybody was amazed & jealous and gossiped that you took dark spirits and maybe even wendigo skookums into your bed to get your magic.
You was a bad bitch grandmother Indian standing among the junk cars with the wind making ripples of your thin dress - I saw that photograph and there were stacks of worn tires and axles and an old truck up on blocks behind you -
I swore then never to own land but to always mind the wind.
I heard the story from the lips of my second cousin how when she asked you if she could bring flowers to your grave and what kind would you like you told her no flowers - you said, "Bring me a can of soup"
I was a grown even an old man when I first heard that story - I went right out from my second cousin and to the store and bought you a can of bean soup and I went to your grave in the old cemetery and left it at the bottom of your stone...
you noticed it, I'm sure.
