The Red Files. Lisa Bird-Wilson

like glass beads

      the Reverend Canon Atwater spends

      considerable time setting it up:

      the younger boys kneel

      in the spiky November grass

      despite their good suits

      the older ones, support crew,

      form a zigzag line behind

      a latticework fence the backdrop that almost hides

      the brick of the school

      burned to the ground in ’29

      as the shutter clicks Freddie Bird tucks

      his head down and forward

      hands clutched together in front,

      laughter in his chest,

      while Alex Moosemay grins out of his skin

      face turned

      to greet the prairie sky

      little Hector on the other side of Freddie,

      his one knee forward, chin tilted up

      anxious, as if he wants in

      on the joke

      or might tell

      I’m telling you now

      it’s November

      1927, that time

      they shared a laugh

      those boys

      at the school beside the blue sloughs

      in the heart of the Touchwood Hills

      Girl with the Short Hair

      if I wanted to describe the girl to you in a poem I might say the short-haired one but they’ve all got short hair and she’s more than that anyway not just a part of the girls’ class making yet another snowman or in dry summer hanging out near the single tire swing looking bored with something clutched in front of her smock, one hand holding it while the other hand plucks at whatever it is, grass or a flower she’s not only a part of this but a “break away,” an individual she has a name but history hasn’t recorded it the curly-haired girl then? surely there must be something better but really they’re all so uniform in their black and white photos oversized winter coats sloppy cotton self-sewn dresses and smocks

       more like the one with the easy stance left shoulder dropped carelessly as if in this restless time of year she might turn at any moment and run—but it’s not what you think, it’s not to run away from the school like the others but because it’s in her bones to lope under the prairie sky to slap her feet down on the long grasses and across the short weeds that stretch endlessly for miles in all directions now this is more like it there she is, the breathless one the one with the wind-knotted hair

      Miss Atwater’s Class

      hats askew and mitts bejewelled

      with snow, coats open

      to the weather, the girls play

      in the shadow of the school, just inside

      the invisible fence line

      they make snowmen and snowwomen

      while a huddle of trees holds watch

      the girls’ class grows up in nine years

      of sharp-edged photos, each time exposed

      after play, exhausted—

      in the front row an unwavering eye

      catches the camera, an Indian

      girl, number One-

      Seven-Four on the school roll call

      the girl with a narrow look, small

      for her age, straight-faced,

      never smiling, never

      frowning, unreadable

      as if she willed her young self long

      ago to stop scenting the trap line, smoked

      hide a vivid memory, pushed

      aside: dense sage,

      wild root, the open plain

      Métis

      Métis road allowance squatters

      with their raw camps set up on the edge

      of the exact reserve boundary, she sees them all

      the time, those kids, school-less, she sees

      those half-breed kids who look no different

      from herself and her friends, sometimes

      in spring, every single thing

      they own fits in the wagon pulled

      by the one sapless horse, away

      for summer work, or back

      from winter trapping

      her mother says something nice

      about the half-breed boy, the one

      who comes to the house to visit

      and have tea with sugar and sometimes a crust of bannock

      she likes him and her mother says he is

      a good boy

      but then one day in the not-work or trapping season,

      he disappears

      him and his whole family are moved

      away and other families evaporate too

      in the middle of the night

      shacks burnt into the dirt and raked clean

      her mother helps her

      understand people

      can just disappear

      like that

      like the seasons or the wind

      she says, we are all

      impermanent and when the girl looks puzzled

      mother says like melted candle wax or snow and then

      it’s finished: what are you doing inside,

      go out and play

      on the empty road, fingers of sunlight

      comfort her back and her shoulder flesh;

      she runs to feel her own quick breath

      Grasshopper

      in the shadows between two school buildings, the residence and the rectory, she lies on the ground on her belly, head on crossed forearms, the threat of June heat menacing the air while tricky grass quivers at her ankles

      minutes ago she had the wind knocked out of her; the smile erased off her face

      she back-hand wipes her nose and a grasshopper jumps nearby, deftly she cups her hand over it

      its head pinched between thumb and forefinger, she draws down the grasshopper’s L-shaped foot: flex and bend, flex and bend

      the mechanical knock-knee: convincing and in her guts a stirring faith that all things are made perfect by god

      somewhere on the road a car horn sounds, a sign, surely, of something

      she hops to her knees then her feet, tosses the grasshopper

      onto the flattened grass

      squatting she prompts its rump with her finger,

      it twitches, draws in a delicate leg

      jump, she demands and when it does not

      she