The sound of the Big Hole, lapping, moving slowly, October-like. I could sit here and breathe in the sage til I filled up with the fragrance so big, so strong, that I explode. Little pieces of me would fling for a mile across the river, into the cottonwoods, over the prickly pear and the juniper, till they finally reach the golden eagle rookery.

And a young eagle will say to its mother, "What's all these little pieces of stuff falling from Heaven; looks like aspen leaves, but it's not." And his mother would answer, "Oh, that's just pieces of that woman who loves sage. I've seen her here before. I've seen her pick sage twigs and juniper twigs and put them in her pocket. I've seen her looking up at us when we're in the sky, craning her neck back till she fell over. I've seen her sitting on the ground, holding sage against her nose, breathing it in. I knew something like this would happen to her if she kept doing that. She probably knew it too.

She loves this place. She loves our sky, our river, the willow, the juniper, the greasewood, the rocks, the old bones, the wild flowers; everything of the earth and sky she loves. She even loves every high-tailed little chipmunk that scurries around. You know, the ones we like to eat for dessert? I know all this because I've watched from the sky---with my eagle eye!

I've seen her on her back staring at our sky, watching the clouds roll across; the dolphin clouds, the shark clouds, the lace clouds, the long finger clouds. I've seen her face down on the ground, kissing it! Can you imagine? And that's where she wanted to be---a part of the earth---and that's what she is now. She breathed in so much sage power she just exploded. Sage Ecstasy.

I've heard her pray for rain, a healing rain, and it would come. Whatever she asked for, it would come. She asked to be a part of mother earth, and now you see these tiny pieces floating through the air like dry aspen leaves. They are sage woman, and she has come home. She has come home.

More of Marg's wonderful work:

Restore Us

May the great waters
of the Creator
wash down
and cleanse us of
OUR HISTORY.

Wash the blood from
our hands,
our hearts.
Restore us, Creator,
all of us,
every one.

Restore the earth
OUR MOTHER,
and all her children.
Restore us to
Harm-less-ness.

Let no harm
be in us
ever again.

Let us, Creator,
remember LOVE,
which will
bring us home
again.

(©Marg Garner, Dillon, Montana - February 4, 1997)

Cluster Picking

I don't remember why they made us do it,
pick those beans, three cents a pound.
Maybe I was 13…now it seems like a life
somebody else lived…like I died
and was resurrected later down the line.
People at the factory said
don't cluster pick, hold with the left,

pick with the right…leave the baby beans.
But God, it was hot, awful hot,
and the rows went on all day long.
A bean-at-a-time took forever
while we drug those burlap bags
up and down…up and down…
the only shade made by those

awful green vines where spiders
clung to leaves, to beans.
I don't know who told us we had to do it.
Maybe for pocket money
Dad was always drunk.

We were a truck-load of kids in
The black dark at 5 a.m.
I hated leaving the covers
My refuge in that other life
The life that's gone.

And there's nothing
Left of the 'me' that was then.
Well, maybe the part that hates spiders, and
green beans, and getting up in the morning
and the part that would cluster pick
if I thought I could get away with it.

(© Marg Garner, Dillon, Montana. Reprinted with permission. Marg Garner is a writer of short stories, essays and poetry.)

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