ojibwe – Thistle Thoughts

Ojibwe Prayer + Update

These days when breath is hard, when new pains & new ailments nearly overtake me, I’m finding it easier to pray through it.

There was medicine just lying around,

Lie awake, craving the taste of lakewater and the scent of September rhubarb.

because Mother sees
how they’re looking
at the sky

the one that sweeps in, carrying
the last of the winter spirits home

…like my own temple,
withering away
over many a day…

my blood can’t handle
any more apologies, insistence
on the right to celebrate
genocide…

steady we row, we walk,
we stand on sacred shorelines

shaken awake
by hands of ancestors

I can’t blame death