confession

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 07/04/2016 (3701 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

 

confession

 

mama is always just
out of reach

a bird i could watch
but never catch

a closed jar
my small angry hands

could not
open

a language
my clumsy tongue

could not
speak

mama kept herself
a secret

she could not tell
if it was truth or lie

when she slept
i would lean in close

listen
for confession

wonder how she spoke
in dreams

my fingertips
feathers floating

over her mouth
feel only her breath

rising
quick and gone

 

@2015 Rosanna Deerchild, reprinted by permission from Calling Down the Sky, Bookland Press (Markham, ON).

 

 

Rosanna Deerchild is an award-winning Cree author and broadcaster. Her family is from the O-Pipon-Na-Piwin Cree Nation located near South Indian Lake, Manitoba, but she grew up in Thompson, Manitoba. She has worked for a variety of Indigenous newspapers and major networks for over 15 years, including APTN, CBC Radio and Global. Her debut poetry collection, this is a small northern town (Muses’ Company), won the 2009 Lansdowne Prize for Poetry, and she launched her second book, Calling Down the Sky (Bookland Press) in 2015. She is a co-founder and a member of the Indigenous Writers Collective of Manitoba. She currently lives in Winnipeg and works as the host of Unreserved on CBC Radio One.

 

The Winnipeg Free Press will be running poems by Manitoba poets every weekday in April to celebrate National Poetry Month. The NPM in the WFP Project was edited by Ariel Gordon.