Gone

Like the last of the generation that founded it

It was our legacy

the legacy of this land

Sacred land 

Land I now know was stolen

A truth that so many of us have to come to terms with

“Homesteaders” sounds better than “Colonizers”

Do the sins of my grandfathers 

sever my own connection to this place?

I can still feel it’s spirit

in the murmurs of the aspen leaves that whisper my name

in the warm murky water that bathed me

in the moldy, damp smell of the bog that nurtures all of our lives

Does my childhood of chasing sprites and fairies through the pine trees

amount to nothing now that I know we never belonged here?

This is the only place I ever truly belonged

Back in the joyous blur of childhood innocence

the entire universe only extended to the edge of the bog

The Resort stood like a castle in the middle of the enchanted forest

It was where we lived

Where we worked

Where we learned

Where we played

Build by my Grandfather’s father 

back in the time before time began

My barefoot feet ran the same path as my mother’s once had

and her father’s ran before her

We were baptized in the lake’s water

fed by fish and wild rice

It was in our blood

It was all we knew

Lifetimes of summer days on the beach 

And winters on the ice

Cleaning cabins and tending bar

A childhood full of helping out

getting under foot

Everyone pulling their weight

It was our family

Grandma and Grandpa

Uncles and Aunts

Mom and Dad and sister and cousins

And the Resort

It was there before any of us

Always there

Always providing

Until it was not

Recessions and depressions

Deaths and successions

Foreclosure

All over

A new resort sits there now

New cabins, new bar

a new family that isn’t ours

Our stolen land stolen once more