Oh Hiawatha how you lend my heart to sadness
How you’ve been so great and noble
To your finest friends and people
How your handmade birch canoe
Rose and fell within the waters
How your willow bow and arrow
So skilled and faithful fed you
But in spite your faithful service
Your ever fearless journey
Dear sweet Minnehaha
Sent off to the blessed land
From a winter hunger fever
From her life so taketh your heart.
And loneliness then cometh
Though we all know just as seasons
So must come and go our good friends
Chibiabos, Kwasind and all kinfolk
And so we must take to remember
Four nights we must take care to
Send them off with mindful firelight
Four nights must we wake to stoke
Campfire for their journey.
How so easy it is to forget
All your deeds of strength and honour
Clearing rivers of their boulders
Catching Nahma, the sturgeon
In unnecessary tumult,
Fighting gravely the Pearl Feather
Fighting Megissogwon
That lived past the black pitch-water
Where fiery serpents gathered,
How Kahgahgee tried to
Take out Hiawatha’s corn fields
But how Hiawatha captured
Kahgahgee, the raven
And killed all the crows who plotted
With Kahgagee to
Cause destruction to his people.
So then why did you have to
Sail off in the Big-Sea-Water
Gitche Gumee shining brightly
So no more the sun would rise
Brightly on your wigwam, Hiawatha?
Tag: bow and arrow
Moon at Midnight – Part XXXXXXII (day 2036)
As Spring melted the snow
I could hear the mountains calling my name
It was like the wind
It would just come into my ear
And I wouldn’t hear anything else
Except my name
And a direction it would come from
I asked Willow if she could hear it
But she said that she didn’t
She said that she had heard
A similar voice in her ear
At a different time calling her
Neither of us really knew what it was about
Never had anything like it before
But we did admit that it was intriguing
And she told me she had never
Felt so much like going for a walk about
As she did that Spring.
When nearly all the snow was gone
And the moon was new
Willow and I decided to head
Directly into the mountains
To see what we would find
Lily River stayed with Mercy
And she was old enough now to mind herself
No doubt she would sleep most nights
By herself in our own teepee.
We decided we would only take one horse
Pack what little things we needed on it
Particularly some warm blankets
As it was still cold at nights
Lots of dried foods
But Willow knew all the Spring food
We could get in the woods
And I had my bow and arrow with me.
We decided that we would stay well South
Warmer, and the direction the whispers came from
The valley we soon discovered
Was in full stinging nettle bloom
And we picked there for a day until
Our fingers were stinging and our spare sacks
Were full of the tea for us to drink.
