With out waking anyone, somehow
I made it out of Mom’s bed and
past my brothers who were
in sleeping bags on the floor
of our parent’s room. Dad was away,
likely in Ottawa. By all accounts
I was a good sleeper up to then,
in December, 1975, when I was
already four-years-old. When mom
found me,
I was in the upstairs living room
pacing like a little man troubled
by some hitch from the day
and as the boy I actually was, I was
clicking my tongue as I paced
and occasionally whimpering,
Mom?
She collected me in her arms
and saddled me on her hip. With
the hand that wasn’t securing
me there, she turned my face to hers
and drew a short breath that never
became the question I responded to.
What would happen to me if you just disappeared?
Out on the back porch she pointed
to a light that was wavering because
the oaks on our side of it were
jerking in a winter wind, the one
that always seems to come out
in grand coughs with the hint of
the year’s first snow on its breath.
That’s Grandpa’s house,
she said. He’s that close. It was
the following December the night
terrors got me and, knowing
grandpa was no longer there,
and with just a hint of what it means
to simply disappear, I’d sit up in the
quiet dark and into what was and wasn’t
still there, shivering behind
the wet and naked oaks.
- - -
I am a W̱SÁNEĆ person, living on the Tsartlip Reservation. The area is referred to as W̱JOȽEȽP in the W̱SÁNEĆ language, SENĆOŦEN. I have spent my life helping my people in a number of different roles. I taught English and SENĆOŦEN at the Saanich Adult Education Centre in the centre’s literacy and upgrading program.
Before that, I worked with the Canadian Institute of Ocean Sciences developing a comprehensive map of traditional W̱SÁNEĆ territory in a project attempting to correlate traditional WSÁNE´ C knowledge and modern scientific “discovery.” I have spent many years contributing to the study of the SENĆOŦEN language, including a modest contribution to the creation of a SENĆOŦEN Dictionary published this summer.
Currently, I am writing a book based on traditional W̱SÁNEĆ stories which are contemporized not only by my interpretation of them, but by a modern W̱SÁNEĆ story told in company with the traditional stories. This work is being done through the University of Northern Texas.
I have been an instructor in the University of Victoria’s writing department and will be co-teaching a course named A Sense of Place again in UVic’s writing department in 2019. I have a BA in writing and English and a master’s of fine arts, both from UVic.
My first book, Taking the Names Down from the Hill, won the B.C. Book Prize for poetry and my second book, Little Hunger, was shortlisted for both the Re-Lit award and the Governor General’s award.
Such a Tiny Light represents my conversation with and sensitivity to mortality and loss.
