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157 Offering: Ojibwe Some leaf taps the classroom window. I am wondering what’s the Ojibwe word for poem, while my teacher says, There is a spirit who helps the language live. We should make offerings to that alive spirit and ask for help. Then he gives the quiz. I bomb it because the words leap live from the page to the open window where the spirit catches them, quizzes: Was it the one who was trying to write a poem? Tell her to open the window and drift an offering down. Sometime before the end of this poem I go outside, try to ask that spirit, who’s got its job cut out, for help. I think: I do not have the right, the right words. And back beside my window: I only have my poems. Then words drift, offering in their own right their own life. ...

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