Last year I read Tlingit/Haida/Yup’ik/Sami scholar X’unei Lance Twitchell’s book “Gagaan X’usyee/Below the Foot of the Sun: Poems” in full, and there are still lines sticking with me all this time later. I re-read some of them recently and – I think because I’m in such a different place now – they speak to me in a different way. And I do love poetry for exactly that reason. The same poem can speak differently to you at different times of your life.

This poem, “Dreaming of My Time,” (beautifully!) speaks to me as the daughter of a Tlingit artist, and as an artist myself.

See the rest of the National Poetry Month Indigenous poems here.

Dreaming of My Time

By X’unei Lance Twitchell

I carve my name in Cedar,
because I like the smell of
tradition in my fingertips.

This is how we do it,
a teacher once told me,
this is how we feed our children.

I carve my name in Cedar,
because I can feel designs
bursting from the grain.

This is how we do it,
Raven once told me,
this is how we heal our people.