Why do you shed
your skins in early spring?
Thin white scrolls scatter—
ondaasiyag—blown about
through the forest,
easy to tear as onion skins.
Are they gifts for making fires
these winter-cold nights
of April? What secrets
do they hold?

Ozaawaagosh
—gichi-gikendaagwad,
a very knowledgeable friend—
once told me
they’re a sign the earth
will open soon
beneath crusty snow
—to reveal green glories,
pale spring beauties,
red bittersweet berries
and hillocks of brown grass
tousled like the hair of a child
awakened from sleep.

Anishinaabeg peeled
wiigwaas—birchbark
in full-leafed spring,
etched syllabics
into warm bark,
stories and histories
rolled into scrolls
hidden away
for future generations.

Women folded and bit
into wiigwaas,
their teeth an awl
creating intricate designs
unfolded as delicate flowers
and vines turtles dragonflies
—telling stories
on purses and medallions
barrettes for the dance.

Today they bend and sew wiigwaas
into makakoon—baskets for picking berries
nooshkaachinaaganan—for winnowing wild rice
waaswaaganan—rolled, pitch-sealed
torches for old-school spearing
walleyes at night in jiimaanan,
buoyant as a feather.

I pick up a thin scroll
from the ditch with a stick,
hold it up, a white flag—
surrender to winter.
As I walk, it rattles like the wind
through dry winter leaves.

Thank you, birches,
for these signs
of earth’s slow
awakening.

Elizabeth Tornes has published four chapbooks, Between the Dog and the Wolf, New Moon, Snowbound, and most recently Northern Skies, out from Muriel Press in June 2022. Her poems have appeared widely in journals and anthologies. She lives in Lac du Flambeau.