I haven’t written any poetry for a long time; it’s been a very dry period. 

            Then we heard about the finding of 215 bodies at the Kamloops Residential School. Unrecorded deaths, in unmarked graves. 

            Anger does not produce good poetry. But poetry can reduce anger. So here you are. It’s certainly not the best of my poems, but I needed to write it. 

Once, we laughed and danced and sang.

What we didn’t have, we didn’t miss.

Until, in rigid rows of ruthless discipline

enforced by rules and rulers 

we discovered,

at our desks and dormitories,

what we didn’t have, any more. 

We learned new names. 

New words. 

And numbers.

We were taught to add 

but mostly we were subtracted. 

Chalk screeched on blackboards.

Its cry echoed in the hollow of our hearts.

And now we lie, mouths gagged with soil,

silenced witnesses to a system

that robbed and stole and deprecated

in the name of a loving God.

Who did not breathe new life into our clay.

Yet we shall rise, 

and point with fleshless fingers 

at your pious posturing

falling on your knees to thank God

for His grace and goodness

in guiding heathen souls towards the white

of spoons and forks, of pinafores and queenly manners.

Yes we shall rise

and with our sightless eyes

shall make you, the truly sightless,

see what you refused to see

a hundred years and more.

We shall arise,

and by our voiceless witness

testify to your inequities.