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Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies 23.2 (2002) 22-30



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The Roots; My Heart is a Root to This Earth; A Crossing; Children of War

Gloria Bird


The Roots

I. Keh Kheet

Keh kheet, the first plant of the season, Intetah says,
grows on the higher slopes.
We gather in the moon called Keh kheet tahl,
or the first harvest of a root known as keh kheet.
Keh kheet is boiled with the skin on
peeled and eaten fresh. First Roots
are never ground or dried.

II. Blue Camas

First in importance as a wild food, camas
grow in the wet mountain meadows, bloom
blue in the early hot season.
Camas are a small white onion
when removed from the earth.
When prepared for food
they turn black and sweet.
Do not pass over the camas root in silence.
With your digging stick
remove them, gently digging,
an all day job hard on the back
but better to have roots than complain
and have no food.
Make a pit for baking.
This earth oven will hold them
the way mothers hold the child within. [End Page 22]
Here is the recipe for camas:
line the inside of the earth oven
with stones, these pitted ones work best.
Build the fire to heat the stones,
remove the coals, and cover the stones
with grass or wet hay. Add a layer of camas
another of hay and a third of bark
overlaid with mold.
On this, keep the fire burning
overnight, but longer is better.
The camas will turn good, sticky
and sweet.
Sometimes, we pound dry camas
make it into finger loaves,
mix it with bitterroot and berries
or boil it with meat.
Remember, granddaughter,
the dried camas will keep
a long time. Always thank
it for giving itself to you.

III. Kouse

Gathered in the month of Ahpahahl
the season of making of uppah
a baked loaf of ground kouse.
Kouse is gathered easy, often
when hunger stalks the land. [End Page 23]

 

My Heart Is A Root To This Earth

I.

The old
leave their mats and robes
in the still darkness
when inside the teepee
is a union of breathing
intermingled with stars
aligned along the center star
of teepee poles.
Dawn is birth
and the old
are closer to the knowing
of the intimate cycle
that is its spirit.
Tuekakas goes out
like breath
to greet the earth
at the initiation
of enduring love.
He becomes a mountain
of promise
at the edge of the continuing
world held by
sinews of light
through pine.
Tuekakas
fierce warrior of love
for unownable land
that is his,
valley of hope [End Page 24]
for the returning
of fish to weirs,
memory
locked to bones
that swim the earth
become the earth
and become
everything.
He grew so old
sightless as newborn
fragile as breathe,
that holy,
that the insistent dawning
that is birth
that is also death
became his.
Spirit
finds its way
into the fabric
of being
leaves alternation
in the texture
of the universe.

II.

Remember
he told his son
never sell the bones
of your father.
Insistent, so close
the other side
that his son
could smell the perfume [End Page 25]
of sage on his breathe,
patooswayswam
current of air
and he breathed in.
Tuekakas was a vision
wavering, a single tuft
of eagle down
shimmering at the edge.
My heart is root
to the earth, he said
with the fierce
devotion of moon
to sun, of lover
to loved.
And in the sacred
promise
of son to father
Heinmoot Tooyalaket
inherited
obligation to
the rhythmic dawn.

 

A Crossing

In this place of men whose smell
disturbs the horses of our men
I see her, a shadow against the barest wood
a distressed memory of my little sister
abandoned to bone thieves in the shallowest of graves.
This woman—not the spirit of one much loved— [End Page 26]
but a wary Snake. By the way she moves
I know that she has seen...

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