Are you sure it's yours?
Caribou Crossing. Na'tasa Heen.
Water running through the narrows
at the meeting of three valleys,
by the base of Big Thing Mountain.
Much going on,
that place.
They're cross, in the crossing.
Individual chips swirling in the gyre.
Deep weighty karmic patterns,
working out over generations.
Far far back,
farther than the lust crazed pale man
and his moiling for gold
and colonial opportunism,
that lay harm on top of harm,
lies a soul twisting violence source.
It's not just you, not just them.
This thing you feel,
what makes you think it has anything,
anything at all,
to do with -you- ?
The full weight of history expressed in this moment,
every moment.
The fierce wind,
streaming from his lips,
is not his.
The needling driven frozen rain pain,
is not yours.
It is raining,
and you are wet.
It is windy,
and you are cold.
Along with your companions,
together in the crossing.
.…
Na'tasa Heen / Caribou Crossing is Carcross, Yukon. A formative childhood place and still one of the places on earth that is my home. I first wrote this in 2018 and didn't share till now. I don't know why now - it's not finished. There's a wispy something hanging from the end, waiting for its words to materialize so it can come forth clothed and be seen.
I want people to know: it's rarely personal, these things we do to each other, they are so very very old. If we can recognize that, see that, feel that, then we have opportunity to put them down. Let them rest, be absorbed into mother earth,. composted down, formed into new life, nurturing life.
And we, we can be free to say and do things for and to each other that are personal, are about you and me and thee.
So this next thing you are about to act on: is it yours?