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NEW-CUE, Inc. is a non-profit, environmental education organization founded primarily to assist writers and educators who are dedicated to  enhancing  the public's awareness of environmental issues.

Patricia Smith Ranzoni

Patricia Smith Ranzoni, born in Lincoln, Maine, writes from the borderless history of her ancestors. Her paternal grandmother, a "domestic" from Parker Ridge, New Brunswick, Canada, descended from Scottish and wilderness peoples of the Gaspe. Books: Claiming (1995) and Settling (2000), Puckerbrush Press; and Only Human ~ Poems from the Atlantic Flyway (2005), Sheltering Pines Press

FACING BOTH EAST & WEST AT THE SAME TIME

LIKE YOUR CANADIAN-MAINE GRANDMOTHERS AND ME

BUILDING YOU FIRE IN SNOW

CENTURIES AGO WHEN AN INDIAN

VIOLET NIGHT

TRUE NORTH

FACING BOTH EAST & WEST AT THE SAME TIME
Along Passamaquoddy Shores

1.
This story comes through nights with gnawing in the walls.
Bobcat tracks to the hens.
Last stored cabbages and squash.
Below-zero weeks-after-weeks when trucks are safe
on the ponds and lakes and tides and light right
for muslins and ricepaper prints of petroglyphs
down at Machias Bay.

2ly.
This story is drug from winter's huddling.
The drive to get out, sniff the air, collect signs
in order to bear winter's last grip before sap
commences its tidal turn. This story rises three thousand
years Before Present, up through fire, silt, and salt
all the way from first people pecking into stone
to a woman shocking with her cell phone ordering pizza
from the gallery as if from church to be picked up
after prayer.

3ly.
This story takes ages to tell after mere hours to arrive
over coastal curves treacherous with black ice to the place.
This story bears reverence at once. Then, and again.
And however many agains its knowledge is sought
the way sopping figures appear and disappear through kelp.

4ly.
In the hall is a book going with this timeless story
where those privileged to enter its presence draw
how they want to be kept in history for having come.
Some simply ink their names. Others, the spirit
of early representation This is my hand....my tribe....
This is the center of our world....This is where I?ve
come from....my position....what I know....
I was here....Thank you... tears.....But we
are not chiseled in stone and will soon be gone.

5ly.
This sacred history saved in round time by Hedden
(the teacher with a name seasoned as a woodpile)
has been shown with tribal blessings by Vinzani
(the teacher with sizzling logs in his name),
burning their marks here from coals deep within
the carved rocks where the Passamaquoddy ancestors live.
We know this because of the teachers Nicholas, Francis, Newell,
Soctomah, and other wisdom keepers whose names witness                                                   
how the blood of the artists who made the petroglyphs
still runs strong in their people whose ancient home this is.


6ly.
Caught in this fire and centrifugal force, a figure no one notices
(on the bench in the middle) bows for understanding.
No one can see the black fur down her neck, spray
of porcupine crown, dissident protestant chain.
She shivers from the likenesses of the shamanic glyphs
to magnified genes. And the heaven and below symbol
to the pattern of chromosomes bearing undeniable inscriptions.

The print from the gouged out European ship and cross
shows her a truth: she is both on the ship looking West
(and all that means), and on the land watching East
(and all that means). Both, afraid. No wonder
her muscles twist, turning both directions at once. No wonder
she can't forget all that is mixed in her heart aching to unite.

7ly.
Home (in the night), she finds these figures floating
in spiral visions and patterns on her dreams,
the portion of The People still in her
(two and then some of every dozen stars)
eroding and crumbling away each generation,
sorrow and shame weighting the wonder
(the seaweed and depths keep hidden from most).
But the searchers who follow inscribed revelations
(treading softly across her being on earth) know
what they are finding until the water level rises
to the point when what is left drawn on her bones
pulls away in the undertow,
crushes into sand and whispers (at last) (with the others)
in the grain of those who saw (and knew).


                                                  *
*                   *             *
     *         *                          *     *
         *               *                                        *
           *

8ly.
The woman to whom this has been shown
has put it down in the old numerical form of "treating minutes"
reported in Richter's history, Facing East From Indian Country,
her arms in the giving back position,
her feet (at long last) facing (again) in the same direction on stone.

TOP

LIKE YOUR CANADIAN-MAINE GRANDMOTHERS AND ME

                                         
May you always have the tin cans you need.
May you know a good one when you see it.
May you have the memory and foresight to keep it.
May you rescue ample ones for steaming puddings and brown bread for beans.
May you save a smaller one for chopping hash.
May you store up a goodly stash for cutting cookies and biscuits.
May you salvage just the right one for doughnuts with a spice-bottle top for holes.
May you lay by nice-sized ones for yeastbreads to bake high in for glaze.
May you convert one to a double boiler for melting paraffin for your preserves.
May you remember enough stout ones for geraniums and rooting slips.
May you claim a tall one for stashing reusable zippers.
May you collect a few for marbles and crayons, nuts and bolts, nails and screws
                         and what have you. And especially
                         shards with stories you can't let go.
May you remember what I told you growing old--the more we love the more we love--
     lest we become but a cold rim holding nothing, nothing to do with age.

 

TOP

BUILDING YOU FIRE IN SNOW


My grandfather's eyes look back like yours.
Picture after new picture, truth comes through.

Shirley's chants, shivery, above hymns in Lee
call me to meet her, hunter, family, deer-tick ill.

This storm is turning everything clean.
Fresh starts, all directions, over these stones.

Close to North, tobacco ceases to hurt.
I build this fire for finding yours.

Here in these embers I feel lost elders
and build my fire in survival for yours.

 

TOP

CENTURIES AGO
WHEN AN INDIAN


If I lived on an island in a river
near where you camped

I would hum walk to me
walk long to me swimmm

I would hummm all the while
I was keeping you well

 

TOP

VIOLET NIGHT


Last night
without words
I slept in the arms
of an old black bear.

When at noon
my dream
woke to itself
I asked what it meant
by that.

Only to protect you.

Welcome you home.

 

TOP

TRUE NORTH


this morning

         opens

by the Eastern door

I see my breath
    
         yours

 

TOP