Old Woman Bay I rise, grandmother spirit, Nokomis here, at the bay, where I have always been my face, the furrowed head land, turns toward the horizon though the great lake’s cold, deep water pounds life and death against me my hair of balsam-fir-cedar mantles across my great granite spine its millions of rugged tendrils burrow in earth and rock when I am silent, buried beneath snow my limbs, branches of sugar maples, dance green in the spring until the time of letting go when my yellow-orange-red dreams tumble across the skies I am Nokomis, grandmother spirit, here, at the bay, where I have always been for all my great age, I am strong how else to bear this wild, dazzling cold?
Paula Kienapple-Summers is a poet from Kitchener, Ontario. Her poems have been published in Existere, The Nashwaak Review, Tower Poetry, and Spadina Literary Review as well as anthologies including Another Dysfunctional Cancer Poetry Anthology (Mansfield Press: 2018) and Voicing Suicide (Ekstasis Editions: 2020).
