{"id":1667,"date":"2014-06-22T02:32:44","date_gmt":"2014-06-22T02:32:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/oderickson.com\/ode\/?p=1667"},"modified":"2015-05-16T23:14:14","modified_gmt":"2015-05-16T23:14:14","slug":"the-ancestors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oderickson.com\/ode\/the-ancestors\/","title":{"rendered":"The Ancestors"},"content":{"rendered":"<audio class=\"wp-audio-shortcode\" id=\"audio-1667-1\" preload=\"none\" style=\"width: 100%;\" controls=\"controls\"><source type=\"audio\/mpeg\" src=\"https:\/\/oderickson.com\/ode\/wp-content\/audio\/TheAncestorsVx3.mp3?_=1\" \/><a href=\"https:\/\/oderickson.com\/ode\/wp-content\/audio\/TheAncestorsVx3.mp3\">https:\/\/oderickson.com\/ode\/wp-content\/audio\/TheAncestorsVx3.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Dreaming before dawn,<br \/>\nI lean into sleep\u2019s breathlessness,<br \/>\nwatching the snow fall into the wigwammed dark.<br \/>\nThe cold has gripped my jaws;<br \/>\nmy black lines die,<br \/>\nturn white on the page,<br \/>\nmelt like snow to the touch of hands,<br \/>\nand I am lost like Scott within his tented dream\u2026<\/p>\n<p>Children darting by, the early shouts,<br \/>\nsmell of doughnuts cooking in the fat,<br \/>\nand toffee-pulling where the snow is deepest.<br \/>\nA great grandmother who raised seven,<br \/>\nand before her time, people in muslin dresses<br \/>\nand stiff collars, and no smiles.<br \/>\nA Red River farm<br \/>\nwith quarters of pork and barrels of flour<br \/>\nin the cellar, and grain man-high<br \/>\non the fields; and Sarah urged her pony<br \/>\nto pull the carriage faster<br \/>\nover the low swells of the prairie,<br \/>\nremembering the Indian women measuring<br \/>\nher baby\u2019s feet with the braids of their hair;<br \/>\nand returning with small beaded moccasins.<\/p>\n<p>So many histories fading in snow.<\/p>\n<p>Odd little men came out from England.<br \/>\nSome of them became Lords of Manors<br \/>\nin the Cariboo wilds, wearing<br \/>\nriding breeches to hunt the moose, but for dinner<br \/>\nthey dressed. No nonsense. Flicking<br \/>\nthe mosquitoes out of their moustaches.<br \/>\nAnd dirty men wandered in from California<br \/>\npoking up the valleys, after gold.<br \/>\nThe Chinamen followed them;<br \/>\nthe sandbars glistened with their smiles.<\/p>\n<p>Who are these people?<\/p>\n<p>Viscount William Fitzwilliam Milton<br \/>\ncrossing the western plains with a classical scholar;<br \/>\nas they crossed the Blackfoot country,<br \/>\nhe read Paley\u2019s Evidences of Christianity.<br \/>\nA Mr. Tuttle, brought up in Cheapside,<br \/>\nselling liquor to the Indians and buying land.<br \/>\nThe little hard-knuckled Ontario farmers<br \/>\nswinging alone, axelly.<br \/>\nThe Scot who was a hard Calvinist,<br \/>\nmarrying a Cree woman, and his father<br \/>\nfought for the Covenanters, mind you;<br \/>\nhe will survey the West.<\/p>\n<p>Windless the sky drifts,<br \/>\nhills upon hills<br \/>\ndrifting, to the barren Rockies,<br \/>\nbarefanged, clamping the sky,<br \/>\nfeeding from blue hollows<br \/>\nwhere the rivers drum, baffled;<br \/>\ntreed ridges, like lodge-poles, angled<br \/>\none upon the other in the smokeless dawn,<br \/>\nupon the piled, strewn debris of ages.<br \/>\nA clump of birch. A stream. Forest.<br \/>\nThe howls of wolves petering in the mist.<br \/>\nSnow, ruins of humped land, whistling birds<br \/>\nsweeping the strings of the sky.<br \/>\nLakes looned, alone, like eyes<br \/>\nwithout puzzle, without yearning.<br \/>\nA moose rubbing his back against a fir<br \/>\nand listening far away.<\/p>\n<p>Who are these aliens?<\/p>\n<p>Roads pushed through, cities sprawling,<br \/>\ngins sipped on croquet lawns,<br \/>\ndances at the Yacht Club,<br \/>\nyoung men in blazers\u2026<br \/>\n\u201cThere was an engineer<br \/>\nwho enveloped forty beer\u2026\u201d<br \/>\nand the gushing grain,<br \/>\nand powering the floods,<br \/>\nand cataracts of trains on the raging hills,<br \/>\nand rockets pointing, star-bright,<br \/>\ninto another century\u2026<\/p>\n<p>All this, enfolded in a wrinkle of time<br \/>\non a speck of a speck of the universal dust.<\/p>\n<p>In this blown, slow snow, wondering,<br \/>\nI dream and wonder,<br \/>\nbegin and end and begin again,<br \/>\nholding these lines, these lives falling, these little<br \/>\ndeaths, feather white, in the dancing night.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>https:\/\/oderickson.com\/ode\/wp-content\/audio\/TheAncestorsVx3.mp3 &nbsp; Dreaming before dawn, I lean into sleep\u2019s breathlessness, watching the snow fall into the wigwammed dark. The cold has gripped my jaws; my black lines die, turn white on the page, melt like snow to the touch of hands, and I am lost like Scott within his tented dream\u2026 Children darting by, the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1667","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-youngcanada"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oderickson.com\/ode\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1667","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/oderickson.com\/ode\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/oderickson.com\/ode\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oderickson.com\/ode\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oderickson.com\/ode\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1667"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/oderickson.com\/ode\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1667\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1708,"href":"https:\/\/oderickson.com\/ode\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1667\/revisions\/1708"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oderickson.com\/ode\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oderickson.com\/ode\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oderickson.com\/ode\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}