expound and confound

Now scattered and smashed,
Need to re-integrate and rediscover.
Our house sits on the top of a hill,
Basement floods during heavy rains,
Cat roams around the house not doing much.
Quarter-acre lot, big for the city,
Daughter and son out playing, singing a ditty,
So Lao of them, but they’ll never know,
Can’t blame them, they’re mostly Indian.
I never taught what little I thought I knew,
Truth is what seems true to you,
A little bit of this, a little bit of that,
I see their faces, see their cousins,
Indian and Lao and otherwise,
same exact sets of eyes,
Same optimism, same innocence.
If they only knew, only saw how I lived,
Not much different from their Mishomis,
Their grandfather, a little like their Nokomis.
“He has an old soul” someone once said-
about me-but no, I grew up the old way,
lived with my family, every single day,
shared meals and stories, free from the lies,
free from computers, free from the movies.
Our reality is what we saw everyday,
Films and music just reached the countryside,
Just as I was born and being raised,
But we were so backwards, we were the last,
The last to buy in to the lies, give up our past,
What I saw didn’t last for very long after,
We were still human and not mere numbers,
On someone’s chart or graph or marketing plan.
I feel at home with Indians because of this,
More than anything else, so many still understand,
That we are not what we own,
That there is more to life than gaining or buying,
And there are folks who don’t buy into the lying,
It is not confined to our race, or our place,
But many understand and see the fallacy,
Don’t give up the reality for the fantasy.
Life is in front of us and all around,
Bigger, better faster, isn’t always better,
So often we are rushed along by life,
But not the real—but the life that we have invented,
Forces that rush us head-long toward death.
I have lived and I have seen,
some how some way,
I must do something, say something,
My work is not complete, need to go home,
Need to complete the circle,
So many circles in my life,
So many beginnings and few endings,
I am Indian (Mohawk),
I am American,
I am Canadian,
I am Thai,
I am Lao,
I am European--Polish they claim,
But I still haven’t accepted,
That last bit is a bit too much.
A melting pot, but the distinctive flavors linger,
So what is next, what follows after,
Addicted to indigenous cultures,
Due to the interconnectedness of everything,
But we are on the cusp,
A little bit of this, a little bit of that,
Don’t want to give anything up.
Canadians like to say they are a cultural mosaic,
The distinctly different pieces remain,
To form a beautiful picture.
I am so many distinctly different pieces,
At times it is difficult to discern,
But the beginning, the start of my turn,
Is to accept those different parts of me.
The beginning of this journey starts anew,
So much I’ve ignored, so much thrown away,
But they are all me, comfortable or not,
Life doesn’t give it to us nice and neat,
Not everything can be easily defined.
I start with a vivid memory,
And becomes more and more so,
I can almost feel the sun on my skin,
Monsoon rain on my head,
Something awakens and expands,
Then I expound and confound even my self.
That is the start and we’ll see where we go,
Maybe to Thailand, then to Laos,
Back over to Ontario and over the ocean once more,
Until I figure this out, until this chapter is closed.