Letters for communing with home
Photograph from Cate Gransaull (IG: @c4teg)
When we listen to the many voices of the land—the wind, the rivers, trees, even the din of its human and non-human people—we are called back to it, to our ancestors and relations, and to a vulnerable part of ourselves. These pieces represent moments of reflection and slowing down to commune with and speak both of and to the land and home, whether we know it intimately or are in the process of nurturing that intimacy.
In this special edition of the SHIFT Journal, we invited submissions from our community that answered the questions: what does it mean to love a place that's imperfect, or even antagonistic? What do we yearn for, wish for, or fight for in lands that we've left or still inhabit? Read the other pieces now in Letters for mapping home and Letters for cultivating home.
ode to iethi'nistenha ohonsta (mother earth)
i am standing at the foot of tekanonta’k
looking up, i see a transmission tower
and a great iron cross adorning her mantle
under my feet is the resting place of my oldest relatives
off of the designated trails i wander, sneaking
around fences and cautionary tape,
between the leaning bodies of birch and pine
into the crevices of her granite outcrops
near the crown of her head i find a lake
created by an architect; here, koi swim
alongside mallards, seagulls, and discarded surgical
masks in a soup of murky grey-green
from the lookout i get the impression that
she is a mountain contained; her peaks boxed in
on all sides by the most primitive colony of kanatien:
ville-marie, or as you likely know it
mon • tree • all
but she insists defiantly on the matter
determined against being drowned out
neither by skyscrapers nor condos nor the oppressive
layers of smog emanating from the city center
she is a mountain unbound, and all attempts
to undo her character she resists righteously
her head held high, turned towards the rising sun
devouring greed, theory, and structure in her wake
i find great pride in my intimacy with her
and i take refuge in her embrace;
after it rains you’ll find me holding hands
with her rivers, trying to keep my phone from falling in
- Karonhianoron Dallas Canady-Binette
Anita
Anita! How long I’ve been waiting for you.
I feel so warm inside—
A familiar face among a sea of foreign encounters.
How have you been?
How’s everyone?
Congratulations on the degree.
Wait—how long are you going to be here for?
Never mind that, we’ve got to make this time worthwhile.
Who knows how long it’ll be again?
Shit, the last time we saw each other was 2022—my graduation, right? Granny had passed away by then.
Granny passed away.
I couldn’t even make it to the funeral.
I always find myself in these situations, don’t I?
When will it end?
“Patience, my darling, it’ll come.”
I think it's time already.
Everything went so fast.
Now, back to our regular lives—
connected by ringtones.
Don’t forget to tell mommy thanks for the Touffé.
Anita, it was nice having you here.
“It was really nice having you here Auntie.”
Until next time—whenever that might be.
- Jephte Joseph
LANDGUAGING
My ancestors are connected to five of the seven continents.
We have been fed by many lands. We carry many waters.
We don’t speak our Landguages anymore, but our hands know what to do:
The grains of rice slide through our fingers like liquid braille in the water, while we wait for it to run clear.
The carefully chosen spices prickle in our palms as we crush them, watching them dance in the hot oil and gyrate out their aroma.
The seasoned meat grits from our grasp into the coconut milk, bobbing between vegetables, before slowly relaxing and tenderizing itself.
Like the good relatives that they are, our foods have been comforting us for generations—connecting us to ours lands even when we are no longer there.
These are not my hands. These are my father’s hands. And his mother’s hands. And so many others before. We all know what to do: we chop out rhythms on the cutting board, frenzy the skins, and rattle the jars.
We don’t sing in our Landguages anymore, but our hands have never forgotten the beat.
We are Landguaging even when we can’t be there.
- Rhonda Chung
