Northland's Minnie Sutherland©

You’re a goner, Minnie Sutherland,
perhaps were the day you were born.
Too late the System will determine
What happened the Eve of New Year’s Day and why,
Assign blame, and adjust its nuts and dolts.

It’s Hull. Dark. Bright. Promenade du Portage peppered with revelers.
Everyone intoxicated with life, with joy, with booze.
You, your cousin. Street cops, seat-belted nurses too?

What bitter irony, Minnie Blind,
a Nightingale should put out your lights.
You didn’t walk into a car, Minnie Cree, but into a stereotype.
Cop, unthinking, uncaring: “Maudite sauvage! Au cris!
Laissez-la dormir dans le neige.”[1]

Three men...a bridge...Ottawa, Minnie Femme Fatale,
conscious, unconscious,
is darkness, is light, your mind or the sky and stars?

Protectors: cruisered cop, street medic find, debate Minnie Hurt
Draped -- Society’s trophy -- on a cold cop car seat
Once briefly on a hood like a forty year old ornament.
Then…no siren, no hurry: Bright red lights:
U R G E N C E - E M E R G E N C Y
a slow recovery, Minnie Sick, Minnie Poor,
not so quick to bounce back
from New Year’s celebrations.

Thank God for strangers’ care.
But care’s not careful
When they
inadvertently
catheterize
your neck
and you drown
in your own
wonderful
Canadian
native
blood
Under arrest…cardiac arrest.

So…they’ll blame your cracked head, Minnie Dead.

But across this old, cold, vast North Land,
Everyone knows:
Natives
disappear or die sooner than
the Trespassers
who dilute brown skin
with white, with drink, with drugs, with attitude
Until you, Minnie Sutherland,
no longer
exist
at
all

But for your spirit.


[1] Damn squaw! Christ! Let her sleep if off in the snowbank.”
Related article
Unsolved murder (page down)
Book