The Forced Sterilization of the Abenaki People. 1931
       

You dream that you wake
and then that you wake
but you dream.
The dream tapes your eyes,
blows fog in your mouth.
The dream draws a map
of your organs.
You dream a sorrowful feeling
like a birch leaf washed downstream.
You try to call out.
The dream's hand covers your mouth.
You dream that you wake, bleeding
sorrowful blood from your organs.
Your organs keep trying
to speak without mouths.
There is a map of the dream on your skin
like tracks, your body scraped
hollow.
Wasn't there a baby?
In the dream you hunt for a baby.

Listen.
Follow the deer tracks,
cut deep in the juniper snow.
The People are camped at Black Plum Lake.
You can make it in three days
if you break
the dream
open.

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Copyright © 2022 Laura Budofsky Wisniewski All rights reserved
from Sanctuary, Vermont
Orison Books
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission