Powwow Love

There are some really wicked songs
that start with a lead straight out of the teepee days.

Agawa, those ones where my mother and I will turn
to each other with the same crooked smile,
carbon-copy blueberry glinting eyes,
just to say, “This song could make me cry!”

Shucks to say that it has to be a really downright beautiful song
with the right two backup singers
wrapped in their favorite skirts of ribbon and thread
standing tall to kiss away each note,

a song that rings of the love my mother had at sixteen.
Remember that scrawny Canadian singer?
With the thick sweetgrass-braided Sasketch Treaty 6 accent?

The leads were pure, they would linger
to rest within the arbor air.
Even the ones that have passed on
dance above the arena in the stars.

I know Mother hears her youthful love
in the moments of the first lead of a wicked song.
She was once only a girl,
a kid who giggled and blushed
when that singer walked in infinite
circles around the ancient arbor just to tell her
what an amazing dancer she was,
who danced nine songs back to back
and still smiled through the ripping sun—
for that’s what she was born to do.

You see my mother was as wicked as the songs
that made her pray into an angel as she danced.
At some powwows we still see him,
and I can see their story replay in their eyes.

This is just a short love story of the two young ndns
who saw each other in a way that only the stars
and piercing yellow lights could reveal
that one Saturday night live at the powwow.