Thoughts from a Thinking Girl

Published in (Re)An Ideas Journal, Spring 2022, https://reideasjournal.com/drbonniepoem/

We have renamed what was once Tahoma, the Mother of Waters,

a name that honored and revered, paid tribute to all we could be grateful for,

instead insist on its adopted name, the family name of a British Navy Admiral

who never washed in its waters, never spread his clothes to dry between its Douglas

firs, never slept on its forest floors, never fished in the Ohanapecosh to the south

or the Cowitz to the west or the 468 other rivers and streams.

Never once did Rainier taste the salmon, trout, char, or whitefish, break his flesh

tearing venomous spicy thorns from the sculpin to savor their sweet, mild, juicy flesh.

We speak of military leaders, explorers, men who explain and quantify

only what their tools permit. We do not speak

of what we cannot measure: glory, wisdom, the way it is protagonist

and villain, savior and god, the velvety green grey of the earth that rises

midway up, the slick blue-green glacial ice under snow with as many names

as there are hues of white and gray, the purples and oranges reflected

as the sun finishes its daily arc. In fairy tales, sleeping giants awaken,

yet we plant and cook and walk and nurse our babies as if this one will slumber on.

In my first language, there is no word for Mother of Waters, Mother of Pearl,

Corn Mother, or any kind of first mother. In my tribe, only one word for heaven, rarely spoken.