Mother Thunder I only exist if not for the Alberta storms that saved me from a life of containment. I knew without a doubt there was hope after mother thunder shared her fire and her songs and painted a picture beyond my yellowing past; possessing me with poverty and circumstance. I remember mother thunders untrained beauty calling me as always from a time before, before my eyes were open and clear and my spirit in denial and my mind locked. I have not seen mother thunder since I abandoned the Alberta Plains in a fight and flight to see and be more than the confines of the colonial walls that seemed to wrap its arms tighter smothering me until I should just give. The reservation does not call me home But I am reminded of home when my Only lonely friend was mother thunder. I miss the crawling lightening And the day shattering moment That reveals the stark of night striking light That is mother thunders child called lightning who is my friend and calls to me from home who heightens, lightens and brightens The exact moment that the rain fingertips paint my face and I miss calling her name and feeling her gentle anger ignite my fire. Mother thunder who makes me dance in the rain and stirs flashes of light across her cobalt canvas and drenches me in her tears and benches me in white light I miss the plains I have abandoned. In the Dog House Teardrops hang from barren trees, sickly grass slouches upon the earthly bed- defeated, disassociated.

Cold, washed out blue, flanked by threatening billows, encircling and encasing the dog house and the two lives buried within it. She hunches in fetal pose in the backside of the dog house. She counts spiral knotholes, seizing her breath, tracing nature's patterns, now forced to be a part of something else Her something else- Her somewhere else She'd rather be. She traces the knotholes and counts them over, and over again and feels a false consolation. "Yes", she says to herself, "still 7" Indifferent splats of rain rap on the weather battered roof. Thin arms embrace shivering dog. Listening for footsteps, she hopes they are rain beats or heartbeats, and not footsteps. Bone cold water oozes through the cracks, trickling, seeking end.

She can hear the dogs' life drum as weary as her own. Finally, her lost breath returns They both fall to sleep, In the safety of the dog house.