The pause
negotiation
healing is happening here
for me it’s the spot on the river, from driftwood seat
how my son sang in Munsee here
how Buttons had eagle messengers arrive here
walking the land of fires knowing
pottery patterns the feel of their rims
their grit of this soil
warmth of cooked squash
how teeth smiled at songs in the air
how baby smashed blackberries
hands a fistful across time
This fork in the path envelops me in wonder
Patquatheck knoll full of crystals
feel deerskin underfoot yet
smoke rises from refineries
train rattle-roars to Manhattan
each step reminds how
Papscanee is
layers beyond our own
scutes on the sturgeon
a map we keep making
“Papscanee Island” is forthcoming in 2025 in an anthology by NatureCulture’s Writing the Land project.
—
Bonney Hartley is a ’25 MFA-Creative Writing candidate at Institute of American Indian Arts. Her work has been featured in exhibits at Bard College and Albany Institute of History and Art, and published in Boundless (Mead Museum), Celebrate North Berkshires (Tupelo Press and Williamstown Rural Lands), Stonecoast Review, Writing the Land, and The Last Milkweed (Tupelo Press). A 2024 Indigenous Nations Poets Fellow, Bonney is an enrolled member of the Stockbridge-Munsee Community and co-founder of Mohican Writers Circle.
