"Waiting On The Dock" pt 1 (Staci Lola Drouillard)

There are four women in the photograph, huddled closely on the dock. A few of their faces are blurred with movement, as if their images were resistant to capture. We know the picture was taken at the Grand Marais harbor because of that familiar rock pile at the end of the dock, the one graced with a scrubby birch tree. And evidence of a more solid provenance is found in the graceful, sloping shapes of the Sawtooth Mountains that stretch out over the horizon.

The women are Ojibwe, and they most likely walked a mile from Chippewa City, on a path that followed the shoreline of Lake Superior, over Abitazibing, Half-Way River, and down into the lowlands of the town. They are friends, or family, judging by the way they are sitting tightly knit together. And they are dressed alike, in long skirts and warm coats, with scarves made from gingham trade cloth covering their heads. It's a warm spring day, or a cool fall day, it's hard to know for sure. But all of their backs are to the water to keep their faces out of the cold wind blowing off of the surface of the lake. Today they cannot let the chill get inside their coats, because there's no telling how long they will have to wait.

"The Lake" (Jeffrey Skemp)

starving, there was nothing left
and so the wolves evolved to eat stone
and gnashed until the lake was set free, pooling into the day

sparks from their smoldering mouths
lit the sky and they slept
curled warming and bending the shores evenly

the wolves' ravenous precision
unwieldy as silence converged with a million forgotten storms
their floods, the uprooted,
the sway, the gasp and the roar
returned to the wolves' memory of things
and their lungs and throat
and they had a song again that bends the hills
and expands reach

and now the wolves seek us out
their magnetic intuition pulls us into places and near precious things
invisible to us, ones we break

the wolves still burrowing into the shores,
unsatisfied they want us to feel what they know of things
and so they sing and their songs
so easily burrow into our backs and spleens
our sleep and breath and love
make circles around us
and we can feel the breeze of them as they sing
on our cheeks
feel it in the wave goodbye

and they grow tired
and perhaps some day they will tell us how
to use their fur and flesh
since they give us everything already and they know this
and do not object
even if we don’t believe in them, even if they remain
invisible to us, they will give us everything

including their bones of stone
to build our homes and there we hold each other close

"Waiting On The Dock" pt 2 (Staci Lola Drouillard)

We don't know how long they have been sitting there, and we don't know their names. But we do know why they are there. They are anticipating the annual shipment of annuities from the white President in Washington. En route from Superior, Wisconsin, the cargo ship will be laden with nests of iron kettles, heavy, wooden, boxes full of hand-forged nails and stacks of wool blankets. There will also be zhoniya, a specific number of American dollars, made of paper and metal; some for each tribal member. This seemingly simple act of trade between two nations was complicated by the reality of history.

It was not just the exchange of money for land. It required travel from great distances to claim one's payment, differing views on what it means to own a piece of the world, misunderstandings about the symbolic value of paper, and other dirty tricks involving debts owed to the white President for taxes, or penalties if you did not know how to write your name in English. Most importantly, one needed to know the time and place that the agent would arrive, because what these women have learned, is that kettles, blankets or zhoniya, even if owed, only belong to them if they are there in person to receive the payments due. If they arrived late, or got impatient, or sick, then their unclaimed annuities would become the property of the Indian agent sent to distribute them . And they could not wait for the next shipment, which would not arrive until next year, or might never arrive. And so they wait.

"Grand Marais" pt 1 (Tim Blighton)

The town leans against the vast waters of lake superior
like an imminent suicide
or a sailor’s wife,
or a siren

Foam breaks and trails away
Like an ancient brides gown
A thick head of clouds
swirls and threatens to spill out
onto the rooftops

We arrive at night, after a five hour drive
As we get out of our cars, fog reaches up from the street,
Shrouding the sidewalk
As we walk, our feet disappear, then our bodies, then whole cars.
Even buildings recede
Lamp posts become tiny lighthouses
New bodies appear and disappear in the fog,
startled, and startling
We are lost in a town pretending to be a haunted house

But even among these fog shadows
Is there some ghostly image
Projected over my brown flesh
Like a mountain confused for an erupting volcano?

I too am afraid of the dark
I have seen friends from the neighborhood
Become ghost stories
Their houses vacated of light

We didn’t attend the funerals
Or the sentences
Instead we condemned our memories of those places
Until the bodies that once dwelled within them
Receded into the fog of middle age

My body, like Lake Superior,
Is dependent on plate tectonics and past glacial movements
My body, refuses to be stilled, lest it too be forgotten

"Springtime Heat" (Blue Lady & The Free Range Orchestra & Choir)

Cloaked all in white
Her lacy icy river gowns
Rumpled tumbled frozen silent
Draped thick and solid over rocks and bends

Hear the sound of springtime heat
The drip of fraying hems
Hear the sound of springtime heat
The glistening softening gems

Cracking melting shedding
Countless layers on the way
Growing urgent warming rush
Give way the swoosh and sway

Hear the sound of springtime heat
The drip of fraying hems
Hear the sound of springtime heat
The glistening softening gems

Can you hear her giggle?
Can you hear her gurgle?
Can you hear her laugh?
Can you hear her laughing?

Set her free!

She starts to free, she starts to free; free her own extremities
help her free, help her free; free her own extremities
She’s giggling, she’s gurgling; freein’ her own extremities

‘Til all that’s left is clear pure flow
Into the lapping lakey sea

Hear the sound of springtime heat
The drip of fraying hems
Hear the sound of springtime heat
The glistening softening gems