This That This - Elizabeth Spraque

Listen:  Before iron, before The Cross and The Book.  Before masts.  This black stone sluiced with fog.  A whale sleeping.

In the black bowl, where stars live, deer, wolf, rabbit whorl with the hunter until first light walks the tide.  Insinuates through fog.  Traces beach rock.  Swells forward over this black, glistening stone.  A whale sleeping.

First light warms this hand that pecks and carves this story.  How the deer and the bear fell into the arms of earth.  How the people ate until they were ready to sing.

This is a story.  Many people dancing.  This story has a song.  Has smoke rising, clarifying spruce and pine.  This is not a dream.  Stone claps stone.  This is a story of arrival and going back.  Of deer and bear falling to earth.  Of masts.

Before iron.  Stone claps stone, a declaration into this black rock.         Elizabeth Spraque


Diminished Dreams - Marie N Francis
  
I look upon her; she holds my answers, my future, and my heart.
Her shine of wisdom fades with the crash of sands time.
Her lost words are swallowed by the waves of misconceptions.
Her man-made chiseled bounds keep her from soring to her enlightened highs.
Her cries fall deafly on the horizon of on lookers.
Her prophecies vanish with every sunrise.
Her voice dulled by the oncoming traffic.
Her beauty of love, life and death is gone.
  
I stand in wonderment.
I’m one of many people standing on the verge of extinction.
I’m melting away in this pot of modern day life.
I cease to hear the songs of my past.
I’m chained to my dollar bills.
I scream for my culture, but only on the inside.
What I am, what I was, and what I could be is gone.
  
We stand over the remains and wonder what insight she held.                  Marie N Francis


Look Straight - Marie N Francis

The glimmer of hope and serenity.
The knowledge of forethought lays in front of you.
You set right what was told wrong in books of one sided views.
Go forth my child share what you have seen, heard and felt today.
The day is a new, new paths to your future, new wisdom to share, new lives to save.
If only an inch could seem so far.
Do they know such pain, an outcast am I?
Stop with the riddles of insights, they know none of.
Yet there lays hope of serenity.
Forward your eyes search with an open heart; open thoughts.
No Fears, No Judgments.
                                                      Just You.                                   Marie N Francis

Domestic Violence - Marie N Francis

From the whisper of the breeze to the yelling of a storm
She holds our future.
With out stretched arms she offers us shelter.
With her nectar she feeds us.
With her womb she creates us.
With her blood she enhances us.
We are her life, her formations.
New creations lay restless awaiting their new toy.
They are our past.
Hunger, Rest, Shit.
Use, make, waste, that’s their way.
Play, fun, break, that’s their day.
Unknowing, unaware, unaccustomed, that’s their consciousness.
These elder kids know not of their grievance.
With her warm front and their cool demeanor we take shelter.
With the onset of our tempest, we brace for our demise.
Natural walls crumble under the industrial weight.
Icy roofs melt with incineration of earthly hemorrhaging.
Foundations implode with decoration of extinction.
Looking at the hollow ground, exposed sky and no shelter,
                                         We wish for forethought.                        Marie N Francis

Awake - Portia Becker

She comes in my direction, I awake
Foggy after centuries of rest
She looks for me but does not see
She walks over me, standing on my chest
I call to her, but she's deaf to my sound
She rests on me, I can feel her spirit
The water recedes, I reveal myself to her
I am a part of her now
The water rises, I am safe again                                                                             Portia Becker

Artist Statement:  With so many memories of growing up on the land it is hard boiling it down to one image or story. So I thought of other ways to interpret the meaning of the land. The rock's perspective was something I never explored before. I had always thought of the people and animals who have lived there but never of the rock itself. I think the rock's all encompassing and omniscient features overcome its vulnerability to human presence.  Portia Becker.