And Then the Heavens Painted in Green

PHOTO BY SI

It was our epic drive across these divergent landscapes.

In a country we called Home.

Picturesque is Nature’s splendour, with exquisite attention to detail.

But historic.

In the many calamitous paths the country trampled through

to create this current civilization of systems that…

…robbed Indigeneity,

…silenced the whizzing of struggling arrows,

…roared the boom, boom of guns and royal proclamations,

…sanctioned the abduction of brown-skinned children from all they knew,

…forced them into dark, shadowy corridors that echoed the filthy thoughts of desperate men and women, of faith.

And so infrastructures were built on an annihilation.

My baby and I heard the longing whispers of the lost children,

who were now mere spectres of their former glorious selves,

wandering heaving forests and searching hungry ravines,

pouring forth their drink and distress, into wells,

that swallowed up the harm done with a shushhhhhhhh

lasting for generations, shameful secrets of a budding nation.

From the Westcoast to the Eastcoast, we whizzed by multiple unmarked graves,

Of the missing and murdered,

At that time, hashtags did not exist, so the world remained in utter ignorance of #MMIW.

Our country protected for the while from the inevitable disgrace that came too late.

Over the sound of an exhausted, gurgling minivan,

filled to the top of clutter and wares from lives we left behind,

my baby and I steered with cautious speed as we caught the devious glints of disappearing sunlight.

We drove some nights under sky so mystically obscure,

we feared we too would become insignificant stats,

but we were privileged to have the gods on our side.

Upon crossing the defining lines between fascination and monotony,

We headed northward to spend a few lazy days in good company.

No moonlight to offer a safe way to our destination, only the infrequent glare of oncoming traffic.

But as we edged closer to a lonesome stretch, driving up, up into hills unknown,

we looked through the windshield to observe a curiosity hovering above,

We slowed, my foot on the brakes, in awe.

It was as if an invisible hand were painting the atmosphere.

Thick brush strokes of incandescent green hues.

This lustrous phenomenon of jade and emerald tapered off,

floating down, vanishing into the artificial lights of the highway

We marveled at the flight of time through this hypnotic haze,

beckoning us to greater heights,

to a greater recognition of our frailties,

a knowing that we shall reap what we sow,

For then the Heavens painted in green.

In that moment, my baby and I witnessed a transcendence of millions,

from the atrocities of a wounded past,

they moved back to that familiar home of grace and abundance,

where they once spoke the tongues of animals and insects, of trees and grass, of rivers and streams, of hills and earth.

And then the Heavens painted in green,

And then the Heavens painted in green,

Lighting up the starkness of a brutal truth,

And glowing with the promise of a triumphant resurrection.