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Earthmaker
came to consciousness
and found that they were alone in the void,
and they began to weep.

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Earthmaker came to consciousness and found that he was alone in the void, and he began to weep. As the tears fell below, they began to collect and formed the sparkling waters. Earthmaker then wished for solid ground to appear, and in the midst of the waters land arose. Yet the creation was not quiet, but moved as waves in the sea. He then covered the land in stones and grass, yet it was still not quiet. Next he made the four winds and placed them at the cardinal points, but the earth was still not at rest. Finally he made four giant serpents and cast them headlong each into one of the four corners of the earth. Then the earth at last came to rest.

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The loneliness conveyed in those words lived in my resting thoughts for years. As the story continues, the making of Earth was a process, and one of those processes involved finding quietude in the chaos of creation. The four giant serpents that finally held the earth in place are the Island Weights, or Wijirawaséwe, and their names are, Yoiréreginagere, Rek'úhuhíra, Háboguominagara, and Siniwagúreginagere, of the west, south, east, and north respectively. They're waterspirits, or Wakjéxi, and they're complicated beings.

This is a search for these elder Wakjéxi, written as a letter to a loved one, seeking direction and rest through wandering across landscapes around the boundaries of our homeland, the Waazija. From the waters of Lake Michigan, to the river mountain of Trempealeau in the Mississippi, to the ancient mound city of Cahokia, and to the northern blue clays of Minneapolis, these places contain our history and our future, and present in these lands is a care and a concern for the aging Island Weights. Through this pilgrimage I hoped to be a part of whatever conjuring is needed for rebirth and rejuvenation in these beings, and in myself, as the disquiet in these lands and in these lives need the anchoring weight of the Wakjexi and the balance they bring.

I was south of you today,
looking for the Island Weights.
The earth is an island that
has gone taut against the tethers
holding it in place,
and the Weights are tired.
They’re old and they’re gone,
going to the place where the river
swallows the lake.
River Child sings his song
and we drop our prayers into the blue black water.
“What will you make of my body?
What will you make of my body?”
Someday, eventually, we’ll find the others,
alone and along the dark shores.

Still again,
the surface is calm and an Island Weight emerges,
and tells you–
I’m tired of being temporary,
I’m tired of an eventually,
I heard you singing last night on the bank
up the mountain on the cliff facing west.
The oldest of us is in the east
and they’re tired too.
The city breathes and heaves
deep breaths roiling and rippling
down the block and up your street
struggling and pulling against the cords
held down by the Eastern Weight.

You ask,
“If you spun free would you sway or would
you curve around the edges
you were so far from for so long?
Tracing the easy ways it hurts to feel free?”
There,
I see you up high
plucking on the lines
that keep us steady.

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Bones of the sturgeon are scattered everywhere,
and River Child sings his song.

Between the bones the marrow breathes life
back into the dead,
and I say
I love you and I love you.
Drop your prayers again,
and look down into the window of
the earth
and you say,
“Ah how dark you are, Hikiwárekega.
Come out so I can go home.”
The window stays quiet.
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On the road to the Trempealeau Hotel
I stopped along the Mississippi and wondered
if this is the boundary of the Western Weight.
The river flows fast and the harbors house boats
gaudy and white
shining in the sun at noon
easing into the midsummer day.
Up the mountain are the flats
the platforms the hills
where everything began.
The brush is thick as we crossed the bridge
on the tracks of the train confining
the island to the land
refusing it the blankets of water pooling and passing
around its base,
such as before it got its name.
Xeniaja, for a long time.
Soaking on the Soaking Mountain
in the brush sit serpents,
of the land and the water,
waiting
protected–protecting
and decrying a humid world.
Death on the tracks across the river
and you stood in the falls,
falls from another time all dried up and
smooth walls
cleaned by the gentle stroke of
eons and ages and ancestors.
Verdancy and violence hum under everything here.
Yet not you,
tenderly.
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The birds and the stars exploded a thousand years ago
and the Cahokian deity was born and spread
to the lands up north and to the river by its side.
We called them Evening Star
who came and rose with the passing of the sun,
and would become a raccoon,
whose hands were cleansed under a bright blue sky.
“Where is the Island Weight?” we ask,
and Evening Star knows nothing of their kin,
quiet and steady
the directions they give point us further south,
beyond the ancient city
through the waters of Nį̄kúsaxéte.
We float south in an aluminum canoe
guided by currents shaped by the silt
and the earth of faraway mountains
I can only tell you about.
Maybe someday,
maybe soon,
we’ll reach the headwaters and find Rek’úhuhíra
and give them the life we’ve carried.
The heat of the summer tires us out and
our shoulders and our backs are dark and red
pulling water behind us
as we move forward.
What is this Weight carried forward by heavy hearts?
An easement was given
to cross to the western bank,
turned upside down by the bends in the river
that swallowed the lake.
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Runaway horses ran through our dreams
and pulled us finally east
towards the Weight sitting buried in the earth.
The vault of the sky is held down by four points
a canvas stretched further than
you or I or they
could see.
Yet it flails now,
as the earth begun to shake again
so has the firmament,
flustered and anxious for death to come again.
The eldest lies
waiting for our hearts to become full again.
They ran away and we run away
chasing a history forgotten yet not forgiven
grating against those old cords pillared
by a subterranean dreamer,
not yet woken
by our pleas
and our devotion.
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North up the river
it’s a long time along a long lake
where we found the youngest of the Weights.
We were young, too,
up there up high.
Your reflection sits clearly in the water
but I couldn’t look at you,
though I saw you.
There was a peace on the calm
that soothed the pain of our travels,
a salve we’d been needing for a great while.
The clay shone blue wet from the waters and the splashing of children.
As Earthmaker once looked into the void
they cried,
and
the tears
became the waters
that became
the essence of the spirits.
We gathered our blue clay
and built and formed the bodies
of the young Wakjéxi.
New again,
born and revived from the marrow still soft and heavy.
This is for you, and an afternoon.
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