Two Hundred Years

Two Hundred Years

I have swam beneath the ice for two hundred winters
watched two hundred summer suns
shine upon this turbulent sea
saw your kin upon the shore
stepping gently, leaving only footprints
first, then wooden paddle strokes
soon rumbles and streaks in the sky

I have seen your rise
rapid as the moonlight spread across
a tundra plain, and now watch
while the moon-set makes ready
remembering how two hundred years
you watched for my spout
saw hope in the mist
made my grandmother into corsets
carved my mother for a mangled
meal for the bottom crawlers with
war weapons, steel whales
with your men sealed
screaming inside

some of your kind believe we
wield the ability to hear those
thoughts in your head, your actions
are already gale force, only if you listened
long enough at the ocean's edge
everything would crystalize
clear, and two hundred years
you would see from sea




(Poem #1 for the National Poetry Month Challenge by Don Rearden. Here the imagined life of a bowhead whale, the subject of a new novel I'm working on tentatively titled Whale Road.)

Throwback Thursday --- Old School (Warning! Graphic Photo)

Learning how to skin a seal. Photo by one of my folks.

I don't really have the standard memories of elementary school. You know, eating paste and singing "Wheels on the bus." Sure, I might have consumed my fair share of paste, like everyone else, and when I lived in Montana road the bus about an hour each way (and had to walk to the bus stop a mile away -- all up hill of course), but thankfully I never had to sing that horrible song. My best school memories stem from the activities we did that weren't your typical school lessons. In 2nd grade in the village of Akiak, Alaska, my mom as principal and principal teacher, always had us doing cultural activities. Whether we were learning how to build survival fires with just one match (that's right, elementary kids learning how to build fires!) or learning how to butcher a seal, well that was school. And really, that is what school should be. Interesting. Informative. Enriching. Meaningful. Somewhere along the way we've lost that in our education system. We no longer learn things that are useful or meaningful to our lives. Instead we have children memorizing dates and formulas, taking tests, and practicing drills for active school shooters.
That fair skinned boy on the right is me. I'm in second grade in the photo, actively participating in the skinning and cutting of a seal. For some this may be too graphic, too horrible to imagine, but for me it was a special moment. A moment in my memory and my education that rises above the memorizing of times tables and trying to learn the difference between a verb and an adverb. To me this was real learning. This was biology and history and language and culture class all in one, not to mention culinary and art class, as every last fiber of this seal that shared its life with the people would find a purpose, if not a place within someone's stomach.