Sowing

May 15th, Friday ...I ought to have mentioned also that we had on board with us Major Howard, US Army, better known as "Gat" Howard, and one of the two Gatling Guns which he had brought over for use in Canada...he occasionally did a little target practice with his gun for our edification. He was a fine chap, but a typical Yankee who believed that the only good Indian was a dead Indian.

We are journeying down
the South Saskatchewan:
monotonous and void.
Broken only by sandbar maroons,
paddlewheel repairs,
and the target practice of Gat
gunning down anything approaching
the river for a drink. A pregnant
doe bullet-strafed in the shallows; a line of goslings
puffed into the air,
dandelions gone to seed. Muttering
murderous incantations over what he'd do
to a Redskin or two.

Seated square-shouldered on the deck behind his gun
as if it were a farm implement to be ridden in summer sun.

Every day, the weather grows hotter.
Drifting down the river I'm reminded:
All things begin and end with water.
***
Gabriel's Last Military Manoeuvre
Nights are still cool
But day by day the land
is greening. Songbirds have
returned, somehow strange they
still sing. I am travelling south,
mostly under the stars. I will arrive
in Montana by tomorrow. I have made all
my farewells. Riel, in the glade, one last
conversation. Leaving Madeleine behind with our
daughter: will I see them again? My brother, nephews,
soldiers: we are all wanted men. On the horizon, the bluing
of the Cypress Hills. Beneath my horse's hooves, homeland. Maybe for
the last time. In other years, it would be time to start ploughing. This
spring, not the crop we'd thought to plant: bodies of our men, seeded with bullets.

Every night my last thought as I offer tobacco
to the Great Mystery: I am
a General
without
an army