Creek:
as in crick, crooked,
not yet river,
wordings for us from your elsewhere, northlands,
windings across
your late-come, man’s-land boundaries
[these (words) for
what gives you, or stalls you, what
delights
catches your eye, eyeing our
branch and confluence
meanders, kinks, braids, oxbows
millraces
abandoned
a channel for stormwater
the place of recreation, re-
creation, re-invention: we are],
before all others,
in Tutelo-Saponi, the language finding itself again,
hewa
okitgenkai
mani
mony shap
nistek
ne
ne
ne
yamuyimen
[speak forked water shallow rock this here now sing],
on a map, we’re blue lightning,
in water, the bang-bump and angling
of rock crumble, pollens, sand slurry, leaf speckle, scat,
splinters of wood and bone
[reflection, refraction,
leaf-branch, particolored sky
shattering, fractal],
and in your eyes, looking
down, through the fly-lens of water
to the corrugated bedrock—
Say whose stake and homestead, whose ground,
whose elders
coming to meet you here now
in Tutelo-Saponi,
hewa okitgenkai mani mony shap nistek
ne
ne
ne
yamuyimen
Author’s note: Tutelo-Saponi words are used by permission of Native American elders in Orange County, ancestrral lands of the Occaneechi Band if the Saponi Nation.
—
Maura High lives in the piedmont of North Carolina. Most of her poetry is an exploration of this landscape and its complex past and present, the relation of land and water with the humans and other-than-humans that live here. Much of her understanding of this landscape comes from years of fieldwork with The Nature Conservancy. A native of Wales, Maura brings to her work the musicality and traditions of that country. Her work has been recognized with awards and publication. For details, see maurahigh.com.
