Uploaded September 2018 | Updated September 2026, 3 days ago

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Marilyn on the inclusion of her poem Opitemisiwak in nêhiyawak's song "page".

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Otipemisiwak

maybe Poundmaker
or even Big Bear
would have dreamt
those waking figures
Gatlin gun sorrows
bullets, crosses and misguided soldiers
in they were Riel
or Dumont
while Macdonald
swilling spirits
was in some crystal case of glory

and Louis dreamt
that supposedly
in broad daylight
the dawn
on it's unseen bone
was lifting
above the fire

I don't believe
he was merely mistaken
regardless of
how little daylight remained

this evening I retrieved a piece of birch bark
and something more
like a petrified limb
lay in the palm of a snowdrift
I thought of Louis
the way he kept envisioning the dimness

how he dreamt of it ascending
on its unseen limb
how he wanted it to reflect
like water