2 Poems
Chris La Tray
Chris La Tray is a Métis storyteller, a descendent of the Pembina Band of the mighty Red River of the North and an enrolled member of the Little Shell Tribe of Chippewa Indians. His third book, Becoming Little Shell, will be published by Milkweed Editions in 2023. His first book, One-Sentence Journal: Short Poems and Essays from the World at Large won the 2018 Montana Book Award and a 2019 High Plains Book Award. His book of haiku and haibun poetry, Descended from a Travel-worn Satchel, was published in 2021 by Foothills Publishing. Chris writes the weekly newsletter “An Irritable Métis” on Substack and lives near Missoula, Montana.
https://chrislatray.substack.com
The Coffee Weed
For being dubbed invasive
when all you want to do
is take root where you’re planted
and grow, grow, grow,
strain with all your might
to the sky, open your flowers
to the heat and promise
of the same sun as everyone else.
Did anyone ask you
if where you are is where
you choose to be, said,
What about here? and you said, Perfect.
Most of us are blown backward
through life, buffeted by fate
doing the very best we can
with what and where we land.
Even then the grip is tenuous,
shifting soil and slope
that can be washed away
beneath us by turbulent water
we never even knew was there.
I watch the birds out my window,
remember the man who told me,
I don’t want any sparrows around.
And why not?
Just like the other man who said
his understanding was that
Beavers are destructive
and I can’t help but wonder
to whom, and to what?
Put me in the vicinity
of a beaver dam.
I’ll build my nest with
the sparrows, sing in
the morning over breakfast and
brew my coffee from roadside weeds.
203 N. Rodney Street
In the shade across the street from where you stayed, Louis,
a tipsy local with wild hair asks me what I’m doing
and I tell him the revolutionary Louis Riel lived here,
that I’m in town and thought I’d come and pay my respects
to the universe, that maybe some of your stardust might
be stirred up with the rocks and grime of Rodney Street
under renovation, and he says, “Wow, man….” and then
he says, “Hey man, are you Mexican?” and I say no,
I’m Métis and he says “You’re what?” and I say
I’m Métis, you know, Indigenous, Chippewa-Cree and he says,
“Oh, I’m sorry man,” and I say it’s really no problem.
I’m looking at the blue sky and reflecting how we are all
related when the man, still near me, says, “Hey, do you have
a cigarette or any spare change?” and Louis, I think how
dirt-like-this-street poor you were so I give him the $20 in my wallet
and now as I write, minutes later, here he comes, a cigarette in hand,
and a six-pack in a plastic bag in the other, and I hope he
cracks one open on this unseasonably warm day today for me,
and for you too, Louis.
