Haibun

Haibun


In the spring of 1954, two non-Indian brothers, James and John, and a
Chippewa named Leo, went searching for God on the Spokane
Indian Reservation. It was midnight. They carried geiger counters
and a mineral light. They found pieces of God whispering beneath a
spur of Lookout Mountain. When they cracked open the earth, it was
so bright that it fooled the birds, who lifted into flight.

The half-life of a raven
is still a life.
Raven stopped the flood.

First came the arguments about claim rights. Then came the mining
companies and the government. In 1956, they paid $340,000 for the
land that bordered the claim. My cousins Richard and Lucy Boyd,
brother and sister, received most of the money. Lucy died in a car
wreck in 1961. In 1969, Richard choked to death on a piece of steak.
The buried both on the reservation, though I have never visited their
graves.

A rusty tin cup
sits on a woodstove
in the abandoned house.

The uranium trucks rolled for most of two decades, dropping hot dust
on the heads of Indian children standing beside the road. I remember
waving to the truck drivers, who were all white men. I remember
they always waved back. When the mines closed down, the empty
trucks rumbled away. I cannot tell you how many coffins we filled
during the time of the trucks, but we learned to say "cancer" like we
say "oxygen" and "love".

Grandmother died on her couch
covered with seven quilts,
one for each of her children.

The white men quickly abandoned the mine. They left behind pools
of dirty water, barrels of dirty tools, and mounds of dirty landfill.
They taught us that "dirty" meant "safe". After the white men left,
Indians guarded the mine. My uncle worked the graveyard shift. If he
listened closely as he made his rounds, he could hear Chimakum Creek,
just a few hundred feet to the south.

In this light
we can see the bones of salmon
as they swim.

For decades, we Spokanes stared into the bright sky with envy and
built flimsy wings for ourselves. For decades, we pressed our breasts
and scrotums in a kind of ceremony. Now, in 1994, the white men
have come back to clean what they left behind. They plan to dig
deeper holes and fill them with fresh water. They plan to dump
indigenous waste into those lakes, and then add waste shipped in
from all over the country. They gave us a 562-page bible that
explains why we cannot stop them.

Two suns:
Abel fell from the sky,
Cain rose from the lake.

Sherman Alexie.........from The Summer of Black Widows.