grandmother-salmon

(at tthe yanlin -- canyon creek -- off the alaska hwy, southern tutchone country, yukon, sept.07)

When I was doing my fieldwork, I would often start to feel completely overwhelmed -- drowning in so much rich and substantial information that I wasn't even sure what I was submersed in anymore -- there was just so much to take in. Something that always reassured me, though, something would always appear to remind me that yes, in the midst of all of this, there is sense, and unity...

Slowly I am piecing everything together, of course, and coming up with more and more fine-tuned questions. & it never fails to inspire me, hearten me, when I hear these stories, these little things that remind me I am on the right track:

the tightlywoven sense of community, the love for the language, & the bonds, experiences with language shared between children and their grandparents, especially their grandmothers --

(little themes that are mirrored in my own experiences, these resonant threads that keep surfacing boldly throughout my own life with such cohesion...)

& i marvel so gratefully at all of this! what i have been able to experience, what has been shared with me... so many people taught me so much, & i just want to give back, and give back.

mostly i just know she's there, with me, watching me.

(щиро дякую)

* * *

grandmother salmon (notes for a poem, not yet done, etc)

"They say when the fish go up the river their great-great grandmother is at the head of the creek. And that's why they go up to visit the great-great grandmother, that fish. They come back to the same place."

-- Elder Kitty Smith.

(i hear my teachers saying i hope
my grandchildren come speaking to me
dän k’e)

& i am listening to äsua annie ned
in my headphones, & wishing
she was alive so I could meet her
but she’s that salmon grandmother
now, waiting at the head

of the river, maybe she’s sitting there,
beading slippers while she talks to
my own knitting grandmother, who’s
singing 'kazalo divchatko'
while annie whispers her fish-sounds

conversing with silt, slipping into
a dream, waiting for the summer
when her children’s children's children
will leave school, come swimming upstream
she’ll hear their th’ tl’ ch’! & the bubbling ɬ

they’ll say dännch’e, äsua? &
she’ll smile through the swells,
strengthening, äshea! nigha shäw nithan!
for finally her words have returned
to her, finally all of them will speak –