Thread a bead for me,
Not a rosary:
A bright bubble of blood
From that river in flood
Between the worlds.

Carve a flute for me,
To breathe a memory,
Thread a song from the air,
Where the land is bare
On that distant shore.

Hold a hand for me,
Dream a dream for me,
Of summer days I cannot see,
Woven beneath the oldest tree,
Beyond the door.

Light a fire for me,
Down by that inland sea
Where the stars drink the night
And a bright scarf of light
Dances in the sky.


By Yvonne Aburrow

©️Yvonne Aburrow, 2021. Repost only with clear written credit to me. Please include this copyleft notice and all the information below as well.

The imagery in this poem is Pagan imagery (the World Tree, the river between the worlds in The Ballad of Thomas the Rhymer, the land of the dead being over the ocean). The poem is dedicated to the children who did not come home from residential schools. I woke up this morning with the fragment of a dream in my head with beads being threaded on a string as some sort of remembrance ritual. The poem is an attempt to capture the dream.