SI-SI-GWA-D

“In each generation there will be a person who will hear the si-si-gwa-d,
who will listen and remember, and pass it on to the children."

After the last of the vodka at 4:00 am,
the dirty blonde moon would swing in
over the western spit like Island girls
caught on merry-go-round barstools,
that crooked yellow smile guiding us home
over the sandy Donegal Bay road well past
the sleeping loons tucked in on Font Lake.
Little Mike never understood the dunes,
good thing he moved on to Philadelphia
to take advantage of drunken eastern sluts.
The Perseid showers would scrub our hearts
white, guiding us through the blackberries
down familiar paths to broken cabin doors.
There was always an Indian or two
singing our names in the Stonehenge
of beech trees we inherited, oh those giant
smoothed skinned gods left standing guard
over us after your sudden departure.
We watched dead leaves weep through
the branches, rattling down like the bones
of generations of winter-kill deer, the sound
of a thousand Ojibway ancients exhaling.
We always fell silent on the high bluffs,
the Aurora Borealis poking smoky fingers
into the black eye of Lake Michigan.
The women would weep then
at the deep beauty and the simple
wonder of living through the seasons,
all of us filled with autumn’s anticipation,
a Canadian gift we never fully expected.