Cathance River Keening

Cathance River Keening 

I stand in the melting snow with my arms raised.
Some women keen by shrieking like birds
some by standing, silent and long like trees.
Keening is how my ancestors grieved.
They gave it to me, I’ve always had it, but didn’t know.
It’s nice to know, now
instead of just finding myself 
standing 
in the forest for no reason I could see
waking there, face wet, for how long 
I never knew.

I like that the tradition is two 
one screaming - one silent - unspeakably loud
shunning human syntax - only animal sound, or the refusal of any sound at all, listen
there are places that won’t even allow it. 
It incites in us the rowdy
not violent
just sad
the woman’s voice or her slender standing
too sharp to swing around
madness 
when we remember what we were told to forget.

I am keening now for winter 
The Cathance river never froze.
Smelt shacks stacked on shore like corpses
Worthing’s, Baker’s, Jim’s
where will we go 
to snatch our little silver fish
like tossing pennies for a wish, but in reverse
early spring, you stole our hope 
to walk out onto the maw of the bay and cut our holes
where keening is forbidden
we fish and drink - bow our heads to what’s below.
Where do we sink our heavy stones
the sap and river rising.

There’s this Marine who works winters in the whites
bare hand wrenching chairlifts
tearing the filters off his camel wides
black coffee, cold, every day, two grapefruits, half-seized in ice
every night
he sleeps on the north slope in a hollowed-out log.
In spring, he follows the frost line north. 
Some things need to freeze hard
to keep from spilling.
Some of us are so terribly soft
we seep right into the ground 
as soon as it thaws.