09/30/2024
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**Today is Truth and Reconciliation Day**
Land Acknowledgement is lip service until we speak, and ACT
Begin with listening to the stories of survivors
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**_this woman wears red_**
*by Maria E Andrusiak*
Today the trail called my feet
I threw off my shoes and let the earth between my toes
The sun tore my back, orange streaks of burn down my spine
my hand tired from climbing
But when I hit the trail, my feet felt the earth
and the soil took me there
the warm, wrapped in cool
when I tucked my toes and gripped the earth
This woman wears red
and strips off the dress
girded her loins with the torn fabric
and binds her breasts
This woman shoulders her bow
and her quiver of words
and asks forgiveness for her feet
removed from the soil she was enslaved
to the soil she stole
Colonizer, and squaw
I root my feet in the only thing I know
The earth calls my toes
and the Dawson trail pushes me on
I trust it to take me across the island
to take me where I need to go
if I rise up the warrior
and defend them who walk beside
Give me the earth, the black soil, the rock, and the birth
Plant in me the blood flow of this land, this seed
Let it burst forth in words
that heal me, as much as they heal you when I say them
Let me be a storekeeper
the words stripped bare of the oil
that made me a storyteller
Let me give my blood, my bone, my breast
Let me spill my milk upon the earth
and her milk upon the sky
and let the soil take me where I need to go
I feel the creeping cold in my hands
the dull numb in my toes
I feel the wounds crawl up my legs
bandaged, weeping
I feel my spine fall, my blood pool, my heart clot
But I will not stop until the earth seizes the last cell
and I become the humus you walk upon
© Maria E Andrusiak
July 7, 2002
*Feel free to share with attribution.*
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