I am Grateful

I am grateful for the privilege that lets me live on Vancouver Island

I am grateful to be a visitor on the traditional lands of the Lek’wungen People

I am grateful for the freedom to walk on the beach at dusk in safety

I am grateful for being a white male

in a world of violence towards women

I thank the creator for all the gifts I share

I thank the creator for all of you

I’m grateful

for the privilege of sharing

this moment

this now

with you

 

David Trudel © 2014

 

 

bad faith

bad faith has led to this place

the transept holds a draped table

where lawyers pulpit

rights, titles and historical truths

dressed in split hairs

ritualistic applause marks each voice

concepts like terra nullius  lie uncovered

offered up like original sin by unholy courts

whose collective guilt bleeds

as red as maple leaves on white fields

empty spaces left uncoloured

unoccupied by truth

condemned by greed to be torn away

from those who can’t exist

in this place

where faith has been rocked

by fraud and lies

culture quarried and stripped

left for dead

still, there are heartbeats

that call like drums

ascending

 

 

David Trudel  ©  2014

 

 

Song From The Big House

The scent of woodsmoke clings to me

Like a spirit not ready to let go of this world

Not from fear but out of love

Holding on to memories that reverberate

To the beat of the round drum

And the stamp of bare feet on a dirt floor

In a place that echoes the past into the present

Where dances are sacramental offerings

Shared with ghosts who linger in the dust

Raised by each footfall

Even though we applaud we know this isn’t a performance

But a moment to let spirits intermingle

Bathed in smoke that permeates our souls

Dusted with earth that has witnessed degradation and despair

Seen attempts at genocide collide with patient persistence

Until old songs are given new voice

And old voices are heard with new understanding

To the beat of ancestral hearts witnessing truth

In the flicker of flames that never died out

That burn on into the tomorrow of today

 

 

David Trudel   ©  2013

 

 

Ida Nomore

I look into your eyes and see determination

I see courage born of oppression

Of knowing that the worst is only more of the same

And since you’ve taken enough shit for a generation

It’s not exactly child’s play

But it ain’t as bad as giving in

There are no more excuses

No more retreats

When so many backs are walled

A line forms

And damn it

You say, you know what?

Fuck you assholes

If you want to play that way

I’ll take you on

I’ll set the stage

On the granite steps of your monumental edifice

With a lawn chair

A few signs

And time

 

 

David Trudel   © 2013

Journey – A Triptych

1.    North

Traumatized and demoralized

I fled into the north

Heading to Dawson City to visit Tony’s sister

We had a few hundred dollars and a bag of weed

Journeying in my orange VW Thing

As we drove further north

The car became a curiosity, a rare thing indeed

Pulling conversations from the taciturn

As we watched gasoline prices exceed our imaginations

 

One night, while there still was night

On the Stewart Cassiar highway

We came around a bend and were stopped by a wall of gravel

That seemed impossibly high and wide

So we began to prepare for a long wait

Got out the Stoned Wheat Thins

Some cheese and a summer sausage

Figuring it was time for sustenance

When the wall was Moses’d

It parted

Bright lights shone cosmically

 

A D12 dozer was our rod and our staff

Parting the chaos of gravel mounds

With the smooth dexterity of a pastry chef

We followed

Looking more than a little ridiculous to grimy goliaths

Who you just knew only drove trucks

American ones

And probably didn’t eat Stoned anything

 

We were ejected into the blackness of beyond

Heading straight up the map

Through mountains of gravel

Northward we travelled in unhindered light

To a log cabin on the banks of the Klondike

The driveway was twenty miles long

Shared with wolverines and moose

And if it took time to get there

It was a place to feel at home

Secure in the knowledge that door to door salesmen

Would never bother to knock

 

We walked the wooden sidewalks of Dawson City

Avoiding the tourist trappings of Diamond Tooth Gerties

We drank sudsy drafts at backstreet bars

With wild eyed seekers

Big city retreaters

One day we impossibly piled a dozen new friends into the car

Drove to the Midnight Dome

Where we shared the last few joints and a pint of rye

Surveying the small outpost in relentless wild

Sensing possibilities beyond the horizon

 

So we made some possibles happen

Drove the Dempster to Eagle Pass

Where a full moon rose over our rough campsite

Then made way for the northern lights

Dancing starbright with the grace of a Bolshoi ballerina

We whistled them closer until we were covered in magic

Looking out across the arctic circle to the top of the world

 

We danced across the tundra

Past the dwindling line of pecker poles

Hopping from hippy head to hippy head

Forded icy rivers that ran with the speed of the chased

Rubbed shoulders with grizzlies and the grizzled

Whose independence was declared through the intensity of the gaze

 

As the summer wore on forest fires raged

Until the plumes crept over the next ridge

And choppers buzzed our lonely cabin

So we walked a few hundred yards up the twenty-mile driveway

Discovered a command centre

Staging ground for firefighters who could always use help

So we signed up and up we went

Commuting to the smoke where we strapped piss pumps to our backs

Grabbed shovels and watched as timbers candled

Hoping for the wind to shift in time for lunch

Since we had never eaten as well as in that rough camp

Or gotten quite so dirty

Blacker than a Welsh coalminer

Soot that found its way through clothes to every inch of untanned skin

To be scrubbed the next week at the metered shower in town

Since the woodstove and hauled Klondike water only barely sluiced

The top layer leaving us a dismal gray

But we made a few bucks and beat the fire back

Flew like warriors in Bell Rangered wonder

Over undulating mysteries

To see the sea of trees saved for another season

 

A season we wouldn’t experience

But left to the iconoclasts and the lonely

Those who could drift no further

Yet could wield an axe and feed a stove

So when the leaves turned and frost arrived

We turned tail and went south

But a piece of my soul remains buried in the Klondike

Part of the motherlode of the riches of my life

 

 

2.    Alberta

 

The first challenge was to fence a quarter section

160 acres

There was a tight budget so that meant recoiling downed wire

Of the fence we were replacing

Pulling staples and hammering flat the salvageable ones

Assessing posts for rot

Turned out that the convertible Thing was a handy platform

Sledgehammer blow by sweaty blow

For driving treasured new tamarack posts securely into the ground

Which we grew intimate with

Since our lodgings turned out to be a teepee

Nestled in the rolling flat lands of northern Alberta

We worked with the last family of a hippy commune

To keep their dream flickering

As we restored the back forty fence

Learnt the rhythms of this sullen prairie

Sacrificed a glade of trees for timbers for a barn

When you peel the bark off trees with drawknives

You can smell their death

Almost an offering in the crisp autumn light

At least we’d like to think so

Then came harvest and stuking the oats

An itinerant thresher arrived like a Rube Goldberg fancy in action

Hay wagons and itches filled dawn to dusk days

Next weekend the old Ukranian farmer from up the road

Oversaw the raising of the barn

He was barely literate

But knew what needed to be done

So did the dozens of others who we’d seen at the gas station

And the diner

Or not at all

But impossibly the walls rose

Chinked into place

And if it wasn’t quite finished by Sunday evening

It was damn near quite enough as we all said

Breaking bread on long trestle tables in the yard

A few days later the vegetarian era ended abruptly

When Ralph, gentle Ralph the pig

A Charlotte’s Web kind of pig

Radiant pig

Met his doom graphically

Tony missed out on some really great meals

So he volunteered to crank the separator during dinner

Until the memory faded

One day a strange car drove up

Full of aboriginal youth

They wanted to check out the teepee

Having never been in one before

We said sure

Brought out whatever offerings we had

Booze and tokes

Which were warmly received

Reciprocated

As we shared the fire and laughter

Drank into a gentle inebriation

We learnt swear words with great delight

When one of our new friends tried to leave

Couldn’t find the door

We laughed

Then we all went outside to piss under the bright stars

Marveling at the moment

A few weeks later I was given a length of two by four

Dropped off at an intersection at some ungodly early hour

Told pay attention, they’ll be here in an hour

Make sure you turn them that way

Use the persuader

Turned out the orange Thing

Or maybe my crazed look

Was enough to turn that herd

I didn’t need to smack some bovine upside the head

Thank Christ, as I remarked

To some farmer who passed me a flask a few minutes later

We learnt the art of waking up cold

Having to build a fire with one arm quickly thrust from down filled warmth

To last night’s drunken pile of kindling which is almost not enough

But desperation is a good teacher

Living in a teepee in northern Alberta

As fall met winter

We met our match

And the prairie winds blew

 

 

3.    McMurray

 

We knew we were in trouble

When we couldn’t even get a room at the Heartbreak Hotel

Which wasn’t on lonely street

But we felt lonely enough in the construction dusty hive

By the second day we had jobs

Laying pipe in the tarry clay

A one-armed foreman aimed a ruby-eyed laser down the run

Impressing us with advanced technology

We laboured rough and hard

Drank the nights dry at the Peter Pond hotel

Driving back to camp drunk

I gambled on which of the three bridges swirling in view

Was the real one, and won that bet

When the crew was laid off a couple of weeks later

Nobody panicked

Just got new jobs

In our case working for a masonry outfit

Building a warehouse in the cold

The site was tarp swaddled

Propane heaters roared

Inside it was shirtsleeve warm

Outside the snow came down and ground froze up

We discovered frostbite

Slopped pails of cement up and down scaffolding

Going from furnace to frozen like a menopausal matron

One day as wet snow blanketed everything

I had to hold long lengths of metal trusses for the roof

Perched on a flimsy skyhold

While welders arced the other ends into place

Electrical charges raced across and up my arms

Each jolt a nail driven deep

On weekends we’d drive back to the farm

Remembering the dream of that vestigial commune

In the cold light of a short day

Where tires freeze flat and if you can start the car

The wheels go clunk, clunk, clunk for the first mile or so

In order to start cars on an unwired farm

We learnt the art of placing coffee tins with kerosene soaked rags

Under oilpans and setting them alight

Which left time for a second cup of instant coffee

Which I’d drink while looking out the window

Hoping to not see more orange than I wanted to

As winter deepened the summery convertible became even more of a joke

I’ve known warmer refrigerators in my time

There were snowdrifts on the floor that didn’t melt

Until we hit the Coast

After high-tailing it back home for Christmas

With a few hundred bucks in our jeans

And unaudited revenues of memories made

Whose interest is still compounding

Even today

 

 

David Trudel   ©  2013

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Eagle

It came into view through the last wisps of fog

Then disappeared and must have wheeled

Because now it’s drifting obliquely and giving us the eye

Before slipping away

Winged blessing

Over this angular space where we share the air

Called by drums and elders

 

Circling, I see unity

Songs of power and healing radiate warmth

A small boy gives me a red felt feather that I pin to my jacket

Everyone is smiling

When the dancing begins the eagle returns

In spirit

The breath of the chanters flies up

Out of the cloistered square into the timeless sky

Reclaiming the echoes that reverberate to longhouses lost

 

Circling, I see pride

Beautiful regalia worn with serious grace

Shared resolve winding through us all

As the drums pull dancers into song hearts

Spirit moves

Smiles fly across the crowd

On eagle feathers

 

David Trudel    ©  2013

 

 

Victoria Idle No More

I wear my medicine bundle on this trek

A universe contained around my neck

A flake of the rock that rolled Sisyphus

Midnight warmth of a lover’s kiss

Seven dreams undreamt

A perfect snowflake

 

It gives me strength

 

I join the ragtag muster of this armless army

Whose weapons are but peace and righteous dignity

 

My passion is not as bitter as the cold drizzle

Yet there is enough bitter passion to go around

My settler feet fumble through the rounddance

Her hands fly up like birds to throbbing drumbeats

Songs that pull power up and out of the earth

Through the chests of the chanting elders in button blankets

And spongeyoung apprentices taking up ancient beats

From places whose names flow like poetry

Esquimalt, Gitksan, Ahousaht, Haisla, Songhees, Nisga’a, Qualicum

Songs that reverberate off the closed doors of government

Into the hearts of us all

Feeling the power of these words that connect to the memory of this place

Since displaced but never erased

Original needs no title to be authentic

Now is the time to support authenticity

Of people

Of place

So we come together in this parade of weaponless warriors

Fed by desperation

Sparked by indignation

To simply say that we’ll be idle no more

Because idleness is complicit in oppression

So raise a feather and be

Idle No More

 

 

David Trudel   ©  2013

 

 

Idle No More

Ripples of rage spread from bridge to bridge

Flashmobs round dance to drums and chants

Enough, come the cries

From the mothers and aunts and brothers and sons

Enough, say the many

Enough, say the dismayed

Taking away treaty rights by bullyboy tactics

Is one provocation too many

This is a place to draw the line

Delisting protected lakes and rivers is another

Ramming it through in an omnibus bill

One more

But there are others

Like broken promises and dirty tricks

Payouts to the few

Kicking the down and out, routinely

In the rush to sell out to the highest bidder

So there are lines being laid

Feet and fingers no longer idle

Led by leaderless first peoples

Supported by sympathizers

Here

There

Everywhere

Spreading like a toxic oil spill in a pristine valley

Just as hard to clean up

So they’ll try some softsoap platitudes

But eventually

It’s all about adjusting attitudes

So hold your meetings

But don’t hold your breath

Results and outcomes must be seen

Not more hollow wiggle words from wormtongued weasels

Elected or not

This country, this place, these places

Are not yours to subdivide

We, the people say no

Economic interests are transitory

Harmful and dangerous to the land

Priceless land

So back off, Stephen

Back down and get real

Try some democracy

Try some justice

Try some honesty

For a change

David Trudel   © 2013

The Star Maidens

Chapter Three

As the campfire danced in front of them, the girls lay back on their bedrolls and continued talking about the boys and young warriors they knew, or knew of by reputation in the case of some of the other nations up and down the coast.  First, Falling Star asked about one of the young warriors in Starlight’s village who she thought looked pretty handsome.  “But of course I really don’t know anything about him at all.  What’s he really like?” Starlight was giggling uncontrollably but managed to choke out, “Oh, is it ever a good thing you asked me first.  Not only is he stupid, he has the worse case of the farts you could ever imagine.  Believe me, he might look good but he smells so bad you would never want to be near to him!”

After a moment Starlight asked Falling Star about a boy in her village.  He was already promised to another girl. Falling Star asked about a young man from the Sooke territory but Starlight had heard that he had drowned on a whaling expedition. Back and forth they went, listing every single possibility but for each one they found something wrong, and so one by one all the names were crossed off the list.

“You know, Starlight?” said Falling Star, as she gazed up into the heavens, “We might as well wish to marry one of those stars.  I kind of like the looks of that one over there.  I want to marry him.” she said, gesturing.  Starlight responded by saying, “I think that one over there twinkles in a really nice way.  I want to marry him.”  The girls laughed and sat up.

“You know what Falling Star?”

“What?”

“We should do a promise dance for our star husbands before we fall asleep.  Maybe they will come for us.”

So the girls got up, and started dancing around the fire, repeating their wish of marrying the star husbands.  They danced and danced until the fire burned down to glowing embers, and they were so exhausted they collapsed on their bedrolls and fell asleep instantly.

The girls were both tired from their long day and were soon snoring away. The fire’s embers dimmed and the silence of the night was complete. In the middle of the night, when the black was at its blackest, and not even the chipmunks were stirring, something happened that had never happened before.  There was a crackling noise around the campsite, like small branches being broken, and a strange blue tinged light appeared in the sky overhead.  The girls sat up, rubbing their eyes in amazement as the light descended closer and closer to earth.  As it approached, they saw it was some kind of floating canoe holding two young men.  It settled on the ground near them, and they looked at each other in amazement.  “It’s them,” said Starlight, “the star people heard us!”

 

 

David Trudel    © 2012

 

 

Protest

This rabble needs no rousing

Cold winds keep us fresh

Awake to possibilities

Alert to threats

Against the land

Against the water

Against the people

So we raise our voices

Shout our opposition

To economic interests

That disregard so much

Short-term profits

Don’t trump sustainability

Stewardship means standing up

Speaking out

Finding warrior spirit

A backbone and

Resolve

 

 

David Trudel  © 2012