Grandmother Pulls Me - 45" x 24", Acrylic on Fir, $3,500

 
Grandmother Pulls Me

Cree Teaching

It is in this secret place of Kanaway hitowin, That we take care of each other’s spirit

Within my heart, Grandmother pulls me back through my ages, and guides me into yesterday

She’s moved my waters, she’s changed my tides

Cleansed me emotionally, corporeally in every disguise

She’s captured my essence and spun it sideways

She’s shared her soul with me, in a face that lit my dark sides

Coming gently into my night, she saw what I was made of, and broke me,

Saw what I ached for and brought it to me

Like tides that pull and shift, she washed over me and over me

And then she watched over me and over me

And I find in these waters, I’m searching for you

That my right hand reaches and finds Bear Moon

For that little piece of February

To know the spirit, that teaches what’s beyond the beyond

Seeking the rights of silence, in visions, quested from fall

When speaking without a word is known without being heard

Understanding what wasn’t said, and hearing, like Bear, inside the ground instead

I Anticipate her distance in evening black

I Embrace a powerful night of cold and dark shellac,

Because reflectively, she is my Soul right now, I stay here, suspended

For I’m in my last season and for all my final reasons

She has changed me, all the way into my heart,

In the 4th moon of April, out of my mouth comes Sucker Moon

She finds my tongue and purifies it uncensored

Like a fish seeking the spirit world she cleanses this Mother from ruin

Returns here to clear a path, for all the spirits and the ones of the water

To seek the ways of the healed healers

It is the Freezing Moon of November, and every creature prepares

In a time where Star Nation is near, and we plan for Spiritual ways

Like a bear going inside, he grabs hold of  September Corn Moon to last him a long time

Teaching the youth, like rows of Corn, seeding the minds of time

And it is over the winter that the offerings, she’s made of us, must rise

But the twelfth Moon of December is the one that pulls me,

She’s this Little Spirit Moon that has my right leg, teaching me in a good way

To see and to have good health in body and mind and share it with my alls

She teaches me to have the purest of intentions by walking it tall

She pulls me Westward to grow into that good Red Road and not fall

And Like all the Moons she’s ever turned, surrounding me by her every curve

In Spirit and Bear, Sugar and Sucker, Flower and Strawberry,

Raspberry and Thimbleberry, Corn and Falling Leaves,

Freezing and Little Spirit and the Big Spirit of The Blue Moon,

She’s my Grandmother, She’s all around me, She always has been,

LauraLee K. Harris