With the wind under my wings I soar
I see the west Canadian shore
The drum it echoes, echoes, echoes, the drum it echoes through my core
Whispering a haunting rhythm of time, change, and war
Nuu-chan-nulth – A caring and nurturing people are thee
Small families among the mountains, rivers, and sea
Vancouver Island’s west coast is where you reside
Awaiting your canoes on evenings incoming tide

Your men are fishing in the ocean’s secret places
Worry and hope etched in their weathered faces
Each man knowing the days hunting success must provide
For many wives, children, and elders the spoils they must divide

Your rhythm and harmony with the ocean is strong
Whale hunts and oceans spirits intertwined through your song
The drum it echoes, echoes, echoes, the drum it echoes through my core
Whispering a haunting rhythm of time, change, and war
I hear the east call, and open my wings to take flight
The distant drum’s heartbeat calls from the suns rising light
The drum it echoes, echoes, echoes, the drum it echoes through my core
Whispering a haunting rhythm of time, change, and war
Coast Salish – You know how the sea dances and quivers
As you watch the expanse from your inlets, and rivers
Vigilance is needed in case a Storm approaches
To mount a defence if an enemy encroaches.

Your wise headmen lead with such divine humility
Your family life embodies true equality
Your features are defined by a broad face and flat brow
Your girls with plucked brows, braided hair prepare for their vow

You seasonally harvest your rivers resources
Spawning Eulachon and sturgeon complete their courses
The drum it echoes, echoes, echoes, the drum it echoes through my core
Whispering a haunting rhythm of time, change, and war
As I leave your forests of tall cedars and aged fir
The drumming beckons me up the wild Fraser River
The drum it echoes, echoes, echoes, the drum it echoes through my core
Whispering a haunting rhythm of time, change, and war


Okanagan – You survive in the Valley and slopes
In a legend of a coyote you set your hopes
He educated you how to live off the hard land
Your very own lives you bestowed in his paw like hand

Your offspring, your joy, your future you know must be taught
So at an early age, to the elders they were brought
Your youths are handpicked and taught the roll they shall assume
If a warrior shall fall another shall resume

Your seasonal harvest of forest meadows and marsh
Will insure you survival when the winters are harsh
The drum it echoes, echoes, echoes, the drum it echoes through my core
Whispering a haunting rhythm of time, change, and war
With the updrafts I glide over the dry desert plains
I hear the drum call from a land where it hardly rains
The drum it echoes, echoes, echoes, the drum it echoes through my core
Whispering a haunting rhythm of time, change, and war
Secwépemc – your men come out through the eastern sunrise’s door
Your women’s entrance faces the stream to ease her chore
In seasonal cozy houses built into the ground
In a secret place your spoils and possessions are found

Your request for spawning salmon grows louder each day
The messenger crickets announce salmons on their way
You hunt with arrows and spears you crafted from strong stone
Needles and jewelry you made from animal bone

You patiently, wait in the winter’s silent brisk eve  
For the deer’s stealthy approach from the snow covered trees  
The drum it echoes, echoes, echoes, the drum it echoes through my core
Whispering a haunting rhythm of time, change, and war
The drum it beckons from the land of river crossroads
The land where men come to bring and trade their canoes loads
The drum it echoes, echoes, echoes, the drum it echoes through my core
Whispering a haunting rhythm of time, change, and war


Dakelh – You are the people who learned how to barter
You are known as the people who travel on water
With gathered roots you weave fish weirs in the evening air
And you set your high hopes in the chanted salmon prayer

Your children learn from the oral traditions you tell
Chinlac massacres, caves where dwarves shooting arrows dwell
Your widows carry ashes of the husband they held dear
Their Mourning and sadness that will last over a year

The respect for the land for everything you have gain
Though much, and bountiful your harvest some shall remain
The drum it echoes, echoes, echoess, the drum it echoes through my core
Whispering a haunting rhythm of time, change, and war
A plume of smoke and drum beat come from the distant Northwest
Echoing from the place where the Skeena River rests
The drum it echoes, echoes, echoes, the drum it echoes through my core
Whispering a haunting rhythm of time, change, and war

Gitxsan –Your Home is surrounded by snow tipped glaciers
Forests of spruce, hemlock, cedars, and subalpine firs
Your chieftain name and duties you hold for a short time
Other Wilp members are only ‘children’ in their prime

Like the rivers your families closely intertwine
Each account told is a lesson that is sublime
Each Wilp has your story told by a tall totem pole
Your History affects and moves you deep in your soul

Deer, Moose, and small mammal in the wild woodlands you stalk
You pursue the Mountain goat through rugged peaks of rock
The drum it echoes, echoes, echoes, the drum it echoes through my core
Whispering a haunting rhythm of time, change, and war
The drums incessantly pounds as I take to the sky
Urgently calling from remote islands of Haida Gwaii
The drum it echoes, echoes, echoes, the drum it echoes through my core
Whispering a haunting rhythm of time, change, and war

Haida - You live in the pacific northern islands
Your fam’lies Belong to the eagle or raven clans
You watch the tide rise and fall over the rocks and sand
Great mighty sculptures you have created with your hand

With strong healthy cedar trees you made your long dwellings
The entrance way totem your history is telling
Your warrior canoes glide through the rolling waves
Through victories and battles you have prisoner slaves


The sound of the drum beat is mixed in saltwater spray
To Vancouver Island’s west shore I must fine my way
The drum it echo, echo, echo’s, the drum it echoes through my core
Whispering a haunting rhythm of time, change, and war
As I leave your vast, and memorable territory
In the soft twilight air I watch the sunset’s glory
The drum it echoes, echoes, echoes, the drum it echoes through my core
Whispering a haunting rhythm of time, change, and war

Kwakwakawakw- So proud you are of your mother tongue
Born in this beautiful land your ancestors came from
Noblemen, Aristocrats, commoners and your slaves
Your narrative exists among your forefathers graves

Your canoes bow is carved into animal features
The whale, otter, salmon and other sea creatures
You hunt with such heroic assurance all year round
In the shapes of well carved masks their likeness will abound

Your long homes are protected by the oceans embrace
First nations, my people, you are a amazing race
The drum it echoes, echoes, echoes, the drum it echoes through my core
Whispering a haunting rhythm of time, change, and war
I leave your land of legends in a misty gray veil
And on the horizons comes change’s white sail
The drum it echoes, echoes, echoes, the drum it echoes through my core
Whispering a haunting rhythm of time, change, and war
The Europeans came into your isolated lands
Dividing your people into tribes, reserves, and bands
Before their arrival you lived mighty, strong, and free
Now your children fight to reclaim their identity

The drum will echo, echo, echo through time’s core
It will whisper a rhythm of time, change, and war
The drum will echo, echo, echo through your core
It will whisper a rhythm of time, change, and war

I sailed the fjords between Powell River and
Drury Inlet to beyond the Salish Sea.
The land itself spoke from mountains, water falls, islets
From bird song and bear splashing fishers
From rutting moose and cougars sharp incisors.
The place has a scale that needs no advisers
But in our bodies felt, sensed in our story talking.
The Chinese spoke of sensing place by the four dignities
Of Standing of Reposing of Sitting or of Walking.
Indigenous peoples of the passage added of Paddling by degrees
For the Haida and Salish sang their paddles to taboos
To the rhythm of the drum in their clan crested canoes.
Trunks transformed indwelling people who swam like trees.
First Nations marked this land, made drawings above sacred screes
As they walked together, to gather, share and thank the spirit saplings.
So Dao-pilgrims in the blue sacred mountains of Japan rang their ramblings.
Now the loggers’ chainsaws were silent like men who had sinned.
I motored now for of wind not a trace -
I could see stories from the slopes, hear tales in the wind.
Modern hieroglyphs spoke from clear-cuts both convex and concave.
Slopes of burgundy and orange bark shaves
Atop the beige hills, and in the gullies the silver drying snags
and the brilliant pink of fire **** tags
A tapestry of  times in work.
A museum of lives that lurk.
Once the logging camps floated close to the head of inlets.
Now rusting red donkeys and cables no longer creak,
Nor do standing spar trees sway near feller notched trunks,
Nor do grappler yarders shriek as men bag booms and
Dump bundles in bull pens.
The names bespeak the work.
Bull buckers, rigging slingers, cat skinners, boom men and whistle punks.
…………………………………………………………………….
Ashore to *** with my dog I saw a ball of crushed bones in ****
Later we heard the evocative howl of a wolf
And my pooch and I go along with the song
Conjoining  with the animal call
In a natural world fearsome, sacred and shared.
---------------------------------------------------------­---
Old bunk houses have tumbled, crumbling fish canneries no longer reek.
Vietnam Draft dodgers and Canucks that followed the loggers forever borrowed -
Their hoisting winches, engines, cutlery, fuel, grease and generators.
While white shells rattled down the ebbing sea.
Listing float homes still grumble when hauled on hard.
Somber silhouettes of teetering totems no longer whisper in westerlies
Near undulating kelp beds of Mamalilakula.
Petroglyphs talk in pictures veiled by vines.
History is a tapestry
And land is the loom.
Every rock, headland, and blissful fearsome bay
Has a silence that speaks when I hear it.
Has a roar of death from peaking storms when I see it.
Beings and things can be heard and seen that
Enter and pass through me to evaporate like mist
From a rain dropped forest fist
And are composted into soil.
Where mountains heavily wade into the sea
To resemble yes the tremble and dissemble
Of the continental shelf.
Where still waters of deception
Hide the tsunamis surging stealth.
Inside the veins of Mother Earth the magmas flow
Beneath fjords where crystalised glaziers glow.
Here sailed I, my dog and catboat
Of ‘Bill Garden’ build
The H. Daniel Hayes
In mountain water stilled
In a golden glory of my remaining days.
In Cascadia the images sang and thrilled
Mamalilikula, Kwak’wala, Namu, Klemtu
The Inlets Jervis, Toba, Bute, and Loughborough.

Redds shine like new nickels on the dark river bottom,
salmon have returned to spawn the Deschutes,
navigating by primal memories written in DNA,
an internal Tom-Tom GPS wired in their brains.

Watching them struggle up the ladder,
consumed with a drive to leave offspring,
they are herculean athletes battling
the current and the inexorable pull of gravity.

Were these the fry I helped to seed four years ago?
A Squaxin woman told me once,
ghosts of her Coastal Salish ancestors
ride the salmon out to sea and home again.

Roe in these redds dream also of the sea,
their salty eyes and nostrils perceiving
spirits in secret claret-red kelp beds.
The waters ask only to be haunted again.

Lit this slash pile one week ago,
a small pile as far as slashing and burning goes
Since then it’s melted,
rained, and snowed
Unusual and erratic behavior for January
and February in this country
Country that the Salish would’ve known
to move out of before winter set in.
Shouldn’t be anything other
than frozen and buried in snow
but nothing acts now in the way
it used to, and no one can predict
what’s coming, yet we keep reporting
our guesswork like we know something,
still playing make-believe with our
ideas about control, specifically about
how we’d like to be in it—
maybe because we like the idea of
stability so much and wish we had it
despite our tireless irony.


And here is this little steam-***,
this natural wonder of vitality and perseverance,
issuing one more quiet reminder
of how little we know of our actions
or the cycles they’ve started.

As the wave of worries crept beyond the cracks of the ocean floor.
Water levels rise and I call out for you. Help... please... help! But you told me: Swim on your own you don't need me!
   As your words escaped the sea salt strangle me. Gasping- for -air... searching for you! Yet alone I reside in Poseidon's palace, surrounded by trees that once stood tall.
   In the distance I see a home, our home, broken brick-by-brick.  As the roof slowly caved in bit-by-bit. Misplaced memories scattered throughout... flashbacks from our happy home now engulfed by the seiche of the Salish sea!
   Thoughts of thorough talks between you-and-I...  you told me:            
I'll always be by your side! Yet I'm still alone drowning in water that no longer surrounds me.  Fatigued from your flares of fallacy!
   Drained-drowned-crippled-crushed!
Mother... Father, where did you go?