TATSUKETE KURE!

August 7, 2009

“Tatsukete kure!”
Save me!
Her plea haunted me
As I sat in a darkened classroom
Watching a film about Hiroshima.
Her words
Wailed in Nihongo
Pierced through my heart.

We watch in the dark
Learning the people
Burning from inside out
Jumped into the river for relief
And died.

“Okasama, Tatsukete kure!”
She had a mother.
She was a human.
She was a sister.
She is my sister.
She is your sister.
Hiroshima is personal.

The Navaho mothers
Spoke up first.
The uranium pits
The tailings are streaks of death
Leaking into the water.
Promises of jobs
Brought death to the children
The sheep
The people.
Raise your voices, they demanded
And stand with the mothers
They are our mothers
They are your mothers

The elderly monk remembers Hiroshima
He remembers the blinding flash
The black rain
The obscene darkness
And the death.
His young heart hardened with hate.
His Okasama rescued him.
“Heal your heart,” she said.
“Keep the flame alive,”
She had captured a firey fragment that had fallen
From the August sky,
“Keep it alive.
That flame will be a prayer
A small flicker of hope
That this will never happen again.
Work hard to
Keep the FLAME alive,
And let the hate dwindle and die.”
That is the way of life she gave her son,
To pray. To keep the small flame alive.
And she said, “Always remember
Hiroshima.”

And this good son
Dedicated his life to prayer
A prayer for humanity
A prayer for peace.
The elderly monk kept the flame from his youth
A firey fragment from the white sky
Now a flame of memory
A flare of commitment for
Nuclear disarmament
All around the world
The monk kept the flame alive
To pass on to a peace pilgrim from America
A descendant of the eastern woodland tribes.

The peace pilgrim kept the flame alive flying home to America
The pilgrim kept the flame alive praying
And walking
Walking, joined by others along his way
Black, Brown, Red and White,
Christian, Jew, Muslim,
Drumming the First Nation Drum
Chanting a Buddhist song
Praying
And walking across America.
They walked together around the empty pit of the twin towers
And prayed.
They walked the Atlantic Coast.
They walked through cities, towns and farmland.
They walked to the Canadian border of Washington
And the evergreens witnessed their prayers.
They walked through our community
In a downpour
And were met at the Many Nations Longhouse,
with a Welcome Song and warm food.
Carrying the flame still burning,
They prayed here
In this valley
They prayed that there be no more Hiroshimas
Or Nagasakis.

They walked
Through rolling hills
Other valleys cut out by rivers
And finally into the desert land of Four Corners.
They joined the mothers of the Navaho nation
And there
They put the flame into a circle on the earth it had come from,
A prayer fire
Back to its source.
The pilgrims prayed with the mothers
of the Navaho Nation
The pilgrims prayed with
The spirits of the ancestor daughters of Hiroshima
Carrying their cries in their own hearts, as a prayer

“Tatsukete Kure!”
Save us!
Save us from war
A prayer for peace around the world.

They let the smoke carry their prayers
To the Great Maker of all things
Until the fire finally burned itself out.

Peace is personal, one person at a time,
Peace is intentional
A commitment
A journey made one step after another.

Walk behind the ancestor-daughter who cried out to her okasama
“Tatsukete kure!” Save me, Mother!
Walk behind the Navaho mothers
“Save our Mother Earth for the sake of the children
And their children for seven generations.
Walk with the peace pilgrims who brought the flame home
Praying, walking on our good Mother Earth saying to everyone they met
“Tatsukete kure! Everyone.”
Save the earth and all that lives on it.

Fire is meant only for prayer
For cook fires
For healing
For warmth
For building
For forging
For light
For bringing us together.

No more Hiroshimas! No more Nagasakis!
Tatsukete kure!
Everyone!

Lest We Forget

From his book Hiroshima, written by Dr. Ron Takaki, R.I.P. :

Hiroshima had not been given any warning. People heard an early alert and then an all-clear sound, and they resumed their activities. Then came another plane, followed by the atomic blast.

“A bright light filled the plane,” recalled Paul Tibbets, commander. “The first shock wave hit us. We were eleven and a half miles slant from the atomic explosion but the whole airplane cracked and crinkled.”... “ Then the second shock wave hit and we turned back to look at Hiroshima. The city was hidden by that awful cloud, boiling up, mushrooming, terrible and incredibly tall.”

“My God!” several crew members exclaimed in horror and wonder. Robert Lewis would never forget what he had witnessed -- the evaporation of a city: “Where we had seen a clear city two minutes before, we could now no longer see it. We could see smoke and fires creeping up the sides of mountains.”

From an altitude of 29.000 feet, tail gunner George Caron describe it as a peep into hell. “The mushroom cloud itself was a spectacular sight, a bubbling mass of purple grey smoke and you could see it had a red core in it and everything was burning inside. It looked like lava or molasses covering a whole city.”

Meanwhile, on the ground that morning, Naoko Masuoka was on a school trip. She and her friends were singing “Blossoms and buds of the young cherry tree” when someone cried out -- A B-29! Even as this shout rang out in our ears, she said later, “there was a blinding flash and I lost consciousness.”

Sanae Kano also remembered seeing a sudden flash of light. She was eating breakfast and had her chopsticks in her mouth when it happened. There was a big bang and she almost fainted. Kano ran out of her house. “At the river, I saw people who were burned black and were crying for water. Some people were in the river desperately drinking the water. The fire wardens were shouting at them telling them that it was dangerous to drink the water but many people went into the river anyway and drank the water and died.”

After the terrific blast fires were everywhere. Instantaneously, Hiroshima had been reduced to cinders. All green vegetation had perished. Yoshiaki Wada found many dead people lying on the bridge. Some were burned black, some had blistered skin that was peeling off and some had pieces of glass in them all over.

The force of the explosion had sent millions of shrapnel shards in all directions. Yoshihiro Kimura asked: “Where is mother?”
“She is dead,” her father answered. Then she noticed that a nail five inches long had stuck into Mother’s head and she died instantly.

Then almost as if nature had come to cleanse the burned city, it started to rain hard. The mushroom cloud had carried tons of dirt into the atmosphere: from the sky fell a black rain. “The wind got stronger,” Yoko Kuwabara reported, “and it starting raining something like ink. This strange rain came down hard out of the gray sky, like a thundershower and the drops stung as if I were being hit by pebbles.”

After the rain, the survivors looked around and saw corpses everywhere. Bodies were cremated every day in the bamboo grove near the house, on the river bed, or in the corners of fields, Megumi Sera recalled “it made a horrible smell and sometimes even the white smoke would come around our house.”

Far from this scene of devastation and death, Truman was on board the Augusta returning from Potsdam having lunch with some crew members and was handed a decoded message. “Results clear cut successful in all respects. Visible effects greater than in any test.” Truman exclaimed: “This is the greatest thing in history.”

Two days later, the Japanese government finally received a full report on the devastation. When the plane flew over Hiroshima, reported Lieutenant General Seijo Arisue, “there was but one black dead tree as if a crow was perched over the rubble. There was nothing but that tree. The city itself was completely wiped out.”

Hiroshima had been a communications center, a storage area. It was not a purely military target as Truuman had intended. Of its population of 350,000 people, only 43,000 were soldiers. 70.000 people were killed instantly and 60,000 more by November and another 70,000 by 1950 from the bomb.

The second attack had been scheduled for August 11, but the timing had been left in the hands of the field commanders and the day had been moved up to the 9th -- weather conditions.

Nagasaki would have been spared had the city been bombed as originally scheduled. The Japanese govt had not been given sufficient time to respond to the “rain of ruin” that had fallen on Hiroshima and to surrender before another atomic attack. “What we had not taken into account,” General Marshall admitted years later, “was that the destruction of the first bomb would be so complete that it would be an appreciable time before the actual facts of the case would get to Tokyo. The destruction of Hiroshima was so complete that there was no communication at least for a day, and maybe longer.”

On August 9, before Japan could fully comprehend the destruction of the bomb, a plane carrying the second bomb, Fat Man, took of from Tianian. The target was Kokura, war production plant. But a thick overcast prevented a visual bombing so the pilot Major Charles Sweeney turned to the secondary target, Nagasaki, a shipbuilding center. Some 70,000 people were killed by the explosion and another 70,000 died from radiation within five years.

Is the President Listening?

The fantasy of "democracy" fades away. Standing with the Winnemem shows me how very very little life changes from one President to the next. President Obama has surrounded himself with a BIA people who keep out many of his Indian constituency, perhaps because Obama is not familiar with Indian politics, perhaps because he doesn't want to be. Indian affairs is complicated in this Empire.

The BIA gatekeepers are big names like the Echo Hawks. I remember the name Echo Hawk when the family of lawyers first started NARF back in the day. And now they are part of the establishment guarding the little piece of cheese earmarked for tribes for government stamped, government regulated, sometimes even government created tribes. In California, and this is the rub, 90 percent -- a great majority -- of the historical Native American tribes, are dismissed by the federal government as "unrecognized tribes." That means 400,000 California Native people have no relationship, no rights in relation to the US government. They are not seen, not heard. I know the Winnemem are not quiet people. They work hard to speak up as sovereign people whenever they must. But they are not respected, no more than the living waters, sacred places, the salmon are nowadays. Of the 10 percent of the California tribes who are recognized, only four percent are historical. The others are groups created by the US government and called rancherias, many of them wealthy casino tribes.

You know about the President's stimulus package. Supposedly, he has not forgotten the Indian people. However, like the President before him, the funds to help California Indians with health, education, economic stimulus will be going to the most wealthy of the native peoples of that state and zero, nothing will go to the historical tribes who have historically been treated with the greatest of human rights violations -- a policy of ethnocide. These 400,000 tribal people will have nothing.

By nothing I do not speak only about the stimulus package, which would be put to such great use. But I also speak of the nation's commitment to these so-called "unrecognized" traditional, indigenous ways of life. Each tribe stands on the brink of destruction and in Washington, the city of great change with this last election, there's a guy, a lower level government bureaucrat, to whom all letters to the President, nation to sovereign people, is detoured -- no matter the question or concern.

If the Winnemem inform their President "about the promises made to the Winnemem by the Indian agent of 1851 and were never kept, and if the Winnemem further inform him that these and other violations were stated by a letter by Norel Putus (1889) to President Harrison, a letter which served as the basis for the US sending Indian agents to investigate the claims of Norel Putus about the plight of all the California Indians," the they are answered by a form letter from bureaucrat Lee Fleming "have you applied for recognition yet?"

If the Winnemem ask their President about the promises made of the drowning of their lands and the promise of like land which is yet to be kept, they get a form letter from bureaucrat Lee Fleming says "have you applied for recognition yet?"

If the Winnemem notify their President "did you know the cemetery we were given for the cemetery which was drowned under Shasta Lake to re-bury our ancestors and to use for our people has, with no explanation, been transferred from the BIA to the Bureau of Land Management. The BLM statute does not allow burials. This change doesn't make sense because now by BLM regulations it has made it illegal to inter our loved ones in our tribal cemetery," Lee Fleming writes "have you applied for recognition yet?"

How does Lee Fleming, whoever he is, keep getting letters addressed to the President about treaties and laws which have been broken?

Lee Fleming wants to talk about forms to fill out for recognition. Let's talk about recognition. Sacramento lawmakers have asked the federal government to recognize the Winnemem Wintu as the State of California does. Last year, at this time, they passed AJR 39 saying that in California, the Winnemem have always been recognized as a tribe and asks the Federal Government follow suit. But Feinstein and Boxer will not carry sponsor recognition of the Winnemem to Congress.

They don't want to step in front of Congressman Herberger from Shasta Lake County who seems to have a long time grudge and ax to grind against the Winnemem and will not support recognition. Mr. Lee Fleming, filling out your forms will not be enough. Beyond that, filling out your forms do not answer the questions the Winnemem are asking their President.

If the President cannot hear his people because as Indians they are funneled to a bureaucrat who says they need to be on a particular list that they are prevented from by their Senators in order to have a question answered, what is that saying? The Winnemem, a tribe of 120 or so people, people who voted in this last election, have no President, no Senator, no rights, no respect -- no one cares.

So I haven't blogged for a long time because I am grieving right now. My tongue is thick. My throat is tight. Only one thing as bad as having an ignorant man for President and that is to have an intelligent man of color who does not have the information, can't get the information, or could it be he chooses not to see his people of the Winnemem tribe. Are only the "children of immigrants" visible to the President in California? Is his heart moved only by the Native people of the Crow Nation, the Navaho Nation, the Cherokee Nation. What about the nations who were encountered and violated, and met with treachery another century or half later in what is now known as the state of California? And Senators Feinstien and Boxer. Do you care about your people who are Winnemem? Arizona, New Mexico, Oklahoma -- all those states who are proud to be states who have not eradicated their tribal people. Can you be proud that 400,000 Indian people remain invisible? What does this say about California -- that in a mere 160 years you have hardly any Indians that are valued by you and traditional and sacred lands are not valued as well.

Since I follow the Winnemem and they are my family, I see a side of America now that breaks my heart, not the America of immigrants, but the America built on the bones of tribal people and broken treaties, and a world hurtling toward ecological disaster fed by wasteful policies toward the land and waters . Obviously, America is not a country with a national policy informed by tribal input. And in California, sad to say, there is horrific evidence of egregiously arrogant policies silencing and erasing the very people who know and passionately advocate for the land and water. How is this injustice, this blatant violation of human rights carried out? With a tool called "recognition." That's what democracy looks to me now, government by the people, for the people EXCEPT FOR the Winnemem people and the hundreds and thousands of the original people that this government refuses "to recognize."

The Winnemem chief is a young leader. Her aunt whom she succeeded and who lived to be almost 100 years old, into the 21st century, is part of the generation who was kidnapped and put into boarding schools. She survived that. Her parents are the the generation who were chased down like animals and killed for bounty, given diseased blankets as friendship gifts, invited to feast on poisoned meat. The Winnemem have been Winnemem for a long time before the violence and injustice and having survived, they keep being Winnemem even today. Those living now carry on the old ways. The elders taught then. Despite all interference, that line between generations was never broken. Their homeschooled children still do the ceremonies to keep the old way going. They still sing to their sacred springs. They still use the old medicines, and make the acorn soup. They still talk to their Mountain, and take care of their rivers. They are still seen by tribal traditionals all over this country as powerful Indian people.

The lawyers for the Winnemem tribe worked hard on the lawsuit listing the many-layers of broken promises, a human rights case, and as traditional people, the leaders and war dancers took the papers around the Sacred Fire end of April, before going up the Mountain and prayed over beside the sugar pines where the warriors fast. Then the papers were taken to Sacramento along the river on tribal land and prayed for at that Fire and the War Dancers danced into the night and early morning before they assembled to walk to the state capitol.

In July, we weren't surprised that the US Government's response was to ask the court to dismiss . . . . because the Winnemem were not federally recognized!

Our President does not see them, hear them. He is surrounded by tribal people who act as gatekeepers for the federal government's "recognized" tribes and turn a back on their brothers and sisters who came under US government focus after the 1850's. By then the US Congress was secretly hiding these treaties and did not ratify them.

Lee Fleming is the only one who sees the Winnemem letters to President Obama, and I wonder if he even reads them before he shoots out the form letter "Have you filled out the papers for recognition."

Actually, the President who loves all the children of all backgrounds and the First Lady do not even see the Winnemem children. The three girls going through the puberty ceremony were so excited about the "change" Obama's election promised that they sent Michelle, Sasha and Malia an invitation to their "coming of age" ceremony, talking on film shyly asking them to come. Marissa (who will be the next Chief) said excitedly when the letter and dvd invitation was sent in January, after we were assured the Obamas were safely esconced in the White House, "I'm so anxious. What if they don't come?" We laughed, at that time. But I never dreamed that the girls would not get even a small letter congratulating them and wishing them well from the President's office. No Senator to usher the letter through and advocate that three young women receive some kind and supportive words, the next generation of Winnemem leaders were summarily ignored. I don't know why, of all the snubs, this one stung so much. Maybe it's because as a Winnemem tribal member, the children, the future leaders are treasures. Maybe it's because during DNC the Winnemem youth referred to Michelle and the girls like they were acquaintances. Maybe it's because Marissa's excitement was wasted and yet another generation learned they don't matter to Washington even if they mean the world to us. Maybe because the girls never mentioned it when June came and went with not a peep from the White House. Perhaps for me it felt harsh that part of "coming of age" for Marissa, part of becoming adult is to experiene she and her people mean nothing to an American President, no matter how historic the election, how sweet that moment's possibilities.

I am so saddened. I have never met young people like the beautiful spirited Winnemem youth. I have never met a family or tribe like the Winnemem. They are and will always be Winnemem, recognition or not. Their life is hard; it is suffering, but as their former leader said, and as they say today, and as all tribal people who meet them say, "they have a hard life but it is the best life." The Winnemem have something to say and so much to contribute to the quality of the land, to the body of intelligence and wisdom regarding stewardship of the land and the earth, to the proud history of California and this country, to morality and ethics of justice, to exemplary statesmanship and leadership, to the great challenges and priorities facing this nation. But no one who should seems to give a damn.

WW/ Nature Way

Ceremony is part of nature. People say "we're part of nature" as a nice truism, but as Winnemem, we really are. The unfortunate proof is that "progress and development" stops us or causes stress and interference. And we do the best we can. Ceremony whether it is a daily morning prayer and smoking up the house or going around the Fire or the big ceremonies on sacred land, or caring for the land, the songs, the ceremonies, or gathering herbs, or getting water, or raising our youth, caring for elders, all of it, keep us part of the ebb and flow of nature. And nowadays, interferences to the ceremonies and its repercussions -- the sadness and stress on our hearts as well as bodies -- that is a big indicator that we live a life in nature. Like I have said I would not want to be clueless that we live in a time of earth crisis no matter how it feels.

So in these times of upheaval and the end of things, it is natural that part of the "flow of things' includes being stopped at every turn. Nothing is as it was supposed to be any more. And when we are stopped, we may eddy, and then keep on going the best we can leaving behind the stress of worry, regrets, anger and hate, all the other things we pile on hearts which keep us from doing what is needed as part of nature, leave it all behind us, because it can't help. This weekend, there will be a lot of work to do at the Fire together.

But it's not right.

WW/ Ceremony Has Been Cancelled for June

I've been gone for quite awhile from blogging. Tonight, I decided to just throw out what I'm feeling. I am sad.

Puberty ceremony has been canceled for June.
That is related to the salmon which does not come upstream anymore stopped by the dam.
That is related to the sacred spring drying up each year.
That is related to the bees, birds and other beings of nature now endangered because their lives, their ceremonies have also run into interference.
All of it is related.

Nowadays, none of us really need the Book of Revelations or prophecies to realize that the Great Change has begun. We are eye witnesses.

And what I'm saying here is the Puberty Ceremony has been canceled for June. A way of life has been cancelled, June.
An oppositional way of life -- the dam builders who forget the fish and do not allow them a way Home, the corporate harvesters of water, the cloud seeders, those who spread their loved ones cremated remains on the Sacred Mountain tromp around wherever their bill of right allows them to tromp even if it desecrates someone's Home, the speedboaters, concessionaire, the houseboat partygoers who feel shortchanged if they don't have every single solitary weekend for their recreation -- this way of life and their bill of rights is supreme on this land. Because of the Right to Party, Tromp and Take, the Winnemem girls who are to become women with ceremony on the river cannot learn from elder women about becoming a good Winnemem woman. The animals cannot greet them. The celebrants cannot dance and sing them into womanhood at Home on the Winnemem River.

Our Home Mother Earth has been overtaken by a way of life which would suck every bit from her for profit, recreation and passing fancy.

I'm sad. I'm tired. I was in the middle of putting strands of pine nuts, abolone beads and shells together, cleaning my moccasins, making the dangling strands to attach to the head gear to help our future chief, her sister and cousin come into Womanhood. My hands were busy while I was singing along with my CD learning the puberty songs, my feet tapping out the dance steps under the beading table. I was feeling peaceful and good after a hard day taking care of my mom, relaxing, enjoying my work. Will was in the front room reading his email. Then he called out to me, "Mark just sent us email about ceremony. "

My heart sank with the words. Puberty ceremony had been cancelled "due to the stress and uncertainty of federal cooperation to hold the 'batlas chonas winyupnas' for our three young ladies in safety and in the manner it should be conducted, we have decided to postpone the Puberty Ceremony, scheduled for June 4-7, 2009, until next year.

When ceremonies are called for, they should be held in reverence and with a good heart so that nothing negative is brought to the celebrants and guests. We have been unable to work through the miasma of government issues and indifference to tribal rights and still carry a good heart forward. We hope that we will eventually come to a resolve to the problems that plague or ability to freely exercise our religion and lifeway.

For the sake of these three young girls, I hope that one day they will be able to go through this transformational ceremony free from worry, stress and fear that someone will cause a harm that they can not recover from.

I just kept sewing. Will forwarded the email to our friends who were planning to go from here because I didn't have the heart to at the moment. I sewed and sewed and sewed. It's past midnight and I've put everything away now. We're leaving for Dekkas ceremony in a few days for the weekend. We were going to build the structures needed for the Puberty Ceremony there. But now, we'll be doing something else around the Fire, praying, singing, being with all our relations.

Being Winnemem means a lot of ceremonies, whether it to gather around the fire at the ranch or great gatherings at one of the several active Winnemem sacred places. There are ceremonies each year for each of the sacred places to let them know we're still here. We're still singing the songs, doing what we're supposed to do from the beginning of time. Ceremony is the way of life for Winnemem. Before the ceremonies, there is the preparation for them and after ceremony, remembering, dreaming, being led by them -- all of this fills up the rest of the time. I believe that is what life is to all the other beings. Ceremony.

But in these times, the times of Great Change, the End of Things, there are interferences to the ceremony of life, interferences to taking care of responsibilities -- and so ceremony has had to be cancelled for the safety of our young women. And, of course, one can see how all of this is related to the fish and the bees, the mountain spring. The world will be affected that Ceremony was canceled this June just as it is affected by off-schedule migration patterns, and drying springs and rivers.

I will pray hard at ceremony this weekend that the three young women can be brought into womanhood in ceremony next summer. It is important for the survival of the people. I will pray that the sacred spring will come back bubbling all year long. I will pray for the return of the Big Fish to the Winnemem River and to all the Rivers. I will pray for the bees, and all that depends on them. I will pray long prayers for all the ceremonies of life -- because for me there is no option being someone living during the time of great change, of the end of things except to continue to live and to live in ceremony.

I feel fortified now, reminding myself that what is important is one's stand in this. I pray for our Chief and Head Man. They hold the example for the rest of us, to carry on no matter what. Carry on.

A Sign

So this morning I went out at 6 am to the Sacred Fire area to sit with Al Robles. I had clipped his picture with a clothes pin to a bush under the cherry tree, the picture where he’s emphasizing something punching the air with his finger. It had become a prayer flag for me. I couldn’t bear to take it down from where I put it to pray for his healing.

I left it fluttering or soggily bent in half, letting the Oregon rain wash over it. “When it wears away, his love will spread,” I thought.

I’ve been on email, or writing poems, or on websites and Facebook reading about Al. I’ve been reading Bulosan, watching "Manilatown is in the Heart," basically inside the house feeling sorry for myself.

This morning at 4 am, I tuned in on the YouTube memorial clip, taking a moment of silence by myself listening to “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” with ukulele in Iz style. And I thought to myself, “I wonder if I go out to the Fire, if Al will visit. I wonder if he’ll leave a sign.”

You guessed it.

The Al Robles Prayer Flag is gone, not in tatters, not torn.
He was never one to just wear down.
This morning before the sun broke over the trees:

The wind picked it up and it flew away;
The blue jay snatched it in its beak and it’s now a nice nest in the fir tree;
The deer came by and it stuck to them as they grazed on berries
And with them, disappeared into the dawn;
The trickster raccoon took it in its nimble hands
And with a few deft moves made it disappear into thin air;
The bees are chewing and chewing and making it into honey;
The rain got so bad last night a giant tsunami wave was created and it’s now the Ocean

Whatever form he chose,
This morning,
Love is all around the world!

For Al and For Us, Two Pieces

A heart felt thank you to filmmaker Curtis Choy, a reverent nod to writer, warrior and spiritual being, Carlos Bulosan; I've been reading his book American is in the Heart since Saturday night. And for my friend Al Robles, who has this week been called "urban saint" and "Confusionist" -- everybody's Brother, and for memories which allowed themselves through the sadness and upsetness. Here are two pieces. The first is for Al. The second for those of us left behind.

For Al
To be read in the Fireplace Room at Tule Lake Pilgrimage, 2010

Because you wrote on paper bags, scraps. and the last time,
on connected sheets of paper towels,
furling to the floor as you read to us,

Because you wrote about cedar trees
And salmon
And meteors
Your voice softened with Love

Because of all that,
I decided I wanted to tell you about a Tribal People
Right there in California.
It seemed you’d understand.
I wanted you to see the meteor showers from Coonrod Meadow on Mt. Shasta,
Take you up to where the water gushes from the roots of sugar pine
halfway up Cold Spring Mountain
And you would cup the icy spring water in your hands
and pat some on your head and heart and drink deeply.
I wanted to show you, along the McCloud River,
In the middle of the campground a fig tree grows
And the peach, the plum trees -- all planted by Granny’s father,
Proof that her People lived along the river long before there was a dam
A damned dam that stopped the Big Fish from coming Home
And drowned the Homes of the people who know the Fish by their true name
And still sing to them today.
I just knew you’d want to be there.

I walked up to you through the crowd to tell you,
But before I could open my mouth
You asked me, “Did you know a monk came to live in my kitchen?
I mean it. He came in my front door, into my kitchen and said, ‘I’m going to live here’ and I said to him, ‘Live here? In my kitchen?!?’ “

I followed word for word your story
About the monk who moved into your kitchen
And lived there for many months or was it years
After first, he cooked a meal.

I didn’t know I was learning from a Confusionist at the time,
But it all made sense to me:
You never closed doors
On adventure.
And each human being is an adventure waiting to be joined.

Another time at Tule Lake, you said we should go to Manzanar sometime.
And we will.

Before we boarded our buses to go home last summer
You told Shizue to bring sheet music next time so she could sing.
You would play the piano.
It was all planned.
You told me to write a poem to read in the Fireplace Room.
“We’ll ALL do it,” you emphasized, demonstrating a big circle with your arms.

But before I could, you went on the biggest adventure of them all
Without us
And now you are All and All is Al.
I’ll see you in the meteor showers at Coonrod Meadow, Al.
Or in the quiet hours at Manzanar when I finally make it there.

In the cold morning dawn of the high desert
Following Peter Yamamoto’s t’ai ch’I moves --
I’ll see you there too --
In that breeze that tickles our nose while we try to hold that tricky pose.
If you succeed to make us stumble, we will laugh, skyward.

I am sad, I grieve
But, today, it made me smile and laugh out loud,
Remembering you.
I know Al is All
And All is Al.
You’re here and everywhere.

From Misa (Joo) of Tule Lake Pilgrimage

How Did It Happen?

So I’ve been wondering how it happened.

All the elders he revered and adored,
Did he see them?
Did he see the old salmon runs,
The giant stands of ancient trees?
Did he see the pristine streams,
And rivers running wild?
Did he see all that
Through the Light separating us?
If he saw Jesus,
He saw himself
And in a moment’s flash
Did he see himself
Being able to help a little more
Because time’s getting tougher here
On this suffering Earth.

If anyone starts making Saint Al medals,
I’ll be first in line to get me one.
No joke.
I’ll wear it close to my heart.

Misa Joo
May 3, 2009




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