The Glass Cutter

January, cold and bleak, the shore again imprisoned,
The lake, the house, the memory, the dream I once envisioned.
Neither animals nor I ever heard the metal snap,
Crimson blood on pristine snow, fooled by my father’s trap.

There were schools, Father said, down in Thunder Bay.
If he didn’t bring me, they could take me anyway.
I am métis, from the North, I am neither here nor there.
I didn’t understand their laws, and I didn’t really care.

He ignored my mother’s pleading cries,
Made it clear there was no compromise.
Family had become a burden, his was a trapper’s life instead.
He harnessed up the dogs, filling me with dread.

Father took me to the boarding school and told me to obey.
They would teach me to be white, to read and write and pray.
Cardinals appear to us when a loved one passes o’er,
I saw the Cardinal that day in all his red-robed splendor.

I learned his Catechism, I learned to read and write,
And what the Cardinal prefers when he calls for me at night.
I was scared and broken.  I hid the fear and bleeding.

I looked for solace in the moon, as my ache began receding.

Star shine danced upon the snow and it beckoned me with light,
The flakes like fractured bits of glass called me forth into the night.
Winter into spring, then with summer on the way
I said a word to no one, I just walked away one day.

Many nights the sky was graced by northern lights displays,
A Superior reflection all the way to Grand Marais.
Electric hues that lit the sky, arching pinks and greens
Like a whispering collection of colored figurines.

I came to stay in Grand Marais, a quiet little place,
For in that pine-draped sleepy town, I found my saving grace.
A man of silence, skill and sight, a man whose name was Kirk,
A glass cutter by trade, he explained to me his work.

Church window panes, he said, as he cut and cracked the glass,
As he soldered the lead, to make it worthy of High Mass.
He fused the light together, he captured colors of the sun.
He created brilliance, love, and beauty, for the Father and the Son.

Colored hues inside me bled, like a prism in my veins,
Planted where a flame had fed, then purified by rain.
There must have been a reason our lives had intertwined,
For when colors come together, white light starts to shine.

Through Kirk I came to see small shards of redemption.
Patterned after love and hope, and nurtured with attention.
Like a cathedral calls us home, Kirk had shone a light,
And my dark and withered soul found colors in the night.