Read Online Runaway Dreams by Richard Wagamese - Free Book Online Page A

balance on every careful placing
    of the foot.
    Â 
    Â 
    II
    weweni bizindan
    omaa ashi awe asemaa
    listen careful
    put the tobacco here
    Â 
    lay it soft upon the Earth and pray
    say great thanks to your Mother
    for everything she gives to you
    and walk this way
    in the path of the sun across the sky
    for this is the trek
    we all must make
    so that we can gather medicine
    to make this life a ceremony
    anami’aawin  — a prayer
    to all that is
    and everything that will be
    upon our journey’s end
    Â 
    a great walking
    this path whose final gift
    is vision
    Â 
    Â 
    III
    them they call it the medicine wheel but us
    we never had no need for wheels
    so it’s always been a sacred circle
    then and now for us
    see, wheels my boy, had to be invented
    and this was always just a gift to people
    something that always was
    and always gonna be
    on accounta Spirit made it
    Â 
    them teachin’s never come from us
    but we come to own them
    when we make the journey
    Â 
    pass ’em on then
    make sure to honour
    the gift they are that way
    Â 
    that’s the medicine way, my boy
    gwekwaadziwin  — respect
    just knowin’ that everything and everyone
    has their place here
    and us sometimes we need to help
    each other find our way
    Â 
    if that’s a wheel
    me I hope it keeps on turnin’
    Â 
    Â 
    IV
    you lie on this slant of hillside
    staring up at a sky dimpled
    with the light of countless
    possible worlds
    and it feels like you’re impaled
    on it somehow
    the motion of the planet
    the tilt and whirl and spin of it
    easing you upwards
    back into star dust
    Â 
    Star People came once a long time ago
    to sit at the fires of the Anishinabeg
    and bring stories and teacher talk
    that filled their world with dreams
    the Old Ones say they were a gentle sort
    and they brought the idea of ceremony
    like a great and ancient light
    Â 
    and medicine was born
    Â 
    we all of us are energy they said
    we all of us are dream and story
    and in the end we return to it
    to energy, to spirit, to the great
    ongoing tale of our becoming
    because there is no end, no finality
    only a sacred circle spinning
    within us
    the spirit place we’re meant to travel to
    to find the truth of us, the song
    we carry forward into dream
    sung into story, sung into light
    sung into spirit that comes to join
    the energy of all things, the completeness
    of that sacred circle spinning everywhere at once
    all things coming true
    together
    Â 
    the circle is wholeness
    whose first principle is equality
    that creates harmony
    that creates the balance
    that comes to mean
    the humility that transcends all things
    that itself evolves into the love
    that’s born within and reflected out
    to keep the circle spinning
    Â 
    they left us then
    returning to the place of all beginnings
    as the old ones say
    and we began the journey to ourselves
    the circle of us turning
    into years into time into the history
    of our time here
    Â 
    the story of us
    all we ever have
    all we carry with us
    and all we leave behind
    Â 
    so you lie on a slant of hillside
    against a bowl of stars
    the earth pressed against your back
    and the feel of that immense fullness
    everywhere around you breathing
    it into you until you rise finally
    to make your way back
    to whatever location held you in place
    long enough for you to feel
    lonely for the sky
    Â 
    Â 
    V
    You come to fifty-five like you came to thirteen. Expectant as a
    pup at the door waiting for someone to kick it open and send
    you galumphing out into the world again all legs and lungs
    and joy. That’s the trick of it, really. That’s what they mean
    when people say medicine wheel. Wisdom turning into itself
    again. The journey we make that brings us back to the only
    place it can — the place of all beginnings — the innocence
    we are born in and the great, wide, all-encompassing wisdom
    of that. You get to be a boy again, charmed by the