HIDING
Hiding and being decided
Who we were and who we are
Being measured by quantum by marriage like a dated 1985 wine
Redder as we vintage kept in the cold and the dark too long
Saying before we were too red and now we’re just not enough
Hiding who we are to not be judged
Hiding a heritage into the dark
Only identified by one parent the father by a law that breaks then measures you
And the mother who gave birth and nurtures you gets buried under a patriarchy
Running leaving saving children to be adopted
To hide them in another’s keep
Hiding the children from the residential schools
From the racism that scars the heart forever
Hiding children from the priests who would fly over lands and snatch them
Take them away to never be seen again or be returned broken
Hiding my Uncle in another’s keep
Hiding all of us in my grandmother’s heart beat
Hiding my mother in a borrowed sleep
Keeping who we were down into the deep
Hiding us quiet under a water just under the surface clean
My mother knows there’s something hiding
And it shadows her all her life leaving me pieces to find along the way
Hiding them from everyone
And I have learned the lessons of hiding is protection
And I know I must come up for the same air
An ancestry just below the surface
Seeps through the roots of my ancestors lair
And messengers overheard along the way
Of a son my grandmother lost in her day
And this piece of her heart she left to be found
In a silent pain she writes her love and loss into poems profound
My mother had a brother and I had an uncle
"Hiding" 14"x10" Acrylic on Birch
And when he returned looking for his mother she has already passed on
But the water is seeping down below my Ancestors keep
Saying before we were too red and now we’re just not enough
But solidarity belongs in the blood that we steep.
LauraLee K. Harris