Stories on the West Wind

Last week, I read Why Indigenous Literatures Matter by UBC professor and author, Daniel Heath Justice.  On page 77, he writes,

Imagination and curiosity are essential to the empathy required for healthy, respectful, and sustainable relationships with a whole host of beings and peoples, from cedar trees and magpies to thunderstorms and moss-blanketed boulders.  Simply put, there can be no true kinship without imagination.  The more expansive our imaginations, the deeper our capacity for empathy, and the healthier our relationships and communities will likely be.  And the opposite is equally the case: as our imaginations become impoverished and the scope and range of possibility becomes narrower and limited, the health and well-being of the whole world around us will suffer too.

 I was thinking about this while walking along a trail by Georgian Bay.  I came to a gap in the trees where the wild west wind and the waves instantly captured my full attention.  A poem seemed to be the only way to communicate that experience.

The west wind demanded that

I stop and listen NOW!

And so I sat on a nearby bench.

But instead of listening,

My busy brain questioned the wind.

What stories do you carry?

I asked.

Do you bring news of my

Daughter on the prairies?

Or my son deep in the mountains?

Do you carry the yip of the coyotes

Or the growl of grizzlies?

Do you bring me the call of a magpie

Or the scent of red cedar?

Do you bring the smoke of wild fires

Or rain from the western sea?

Yes all of those things

Answered the wind.

Then my mind stilled and I listened

to the crashing waves

Of the lake on the shore.

One after another after another,

Their rhythm a kind of music,

A story of movement and power.

Of timelessness and this moment.

Of faraway and right here all at once.

Wind from the west 
Where two of my children are.

Perhaps you caressed their faces

As you now caress mine.

Perhaps they breathed this same air.

Perhaps it has been in their bodies

As they were in mine.

Perhaps they breathed out water

That lives in the clouds above me.

Perhaps the vibration of their voices

Still quivers in the flowing air.

Then I returned to walking the trail.

The daylilies danced and swayed,

Orange heads dipping and rising.

Red hollyhocks rocked forward and back

And the tall trees rustled and waved

As I walked by.

Cool, dry wind animating us all.

We are part of its story of dancing motion,

Of mighty power, of interwoven connection.

Our breath joins the wind.

It remembers our voices

And carries our story onward.

Daniel Heath Justice (2018) Why Indigenous Literatures Matter.  Waterloo: Wildred Laurier University Press