what a white guy has to say about first nations people

solutions seeking
can be so misleading.

tell me, young one,
why this impermeable water
fluid like its natural aquifers,
at least in summer,
would want to bare
assimilating this new
salty content?

tell me, great elder,
why these winds are not fragrant
with the hope of the future
coming tide of ideas,
billowing out past the prairie horizon
that I know you’ve explored more than I?

I will tell you.
I have that privilege that desires to be appreciated.
I will tell of the greatness
that I have envisioned for you,
and of my knowledge,
accumulated through the colonial institutions
I’ve helped impose
through solitary silent endorsement
and willful participation.

that I will do.
what I won’t, sadly,
is stand back and suffer in these shadows,
the mystical removed from my hope
and the dire needs present in my memory.

I know, what a further imposition.
it’s what intruders do, impose.
but only because
I don’t know how else to help.

solutions seeking
can feel so desperate.