Once a Blue Star

(Scroll down past each photo to read entire poem)

“Once a blue star fell onto this meadow, up there above the mothering stones,

where the stars settled in, took root, and flowered.

All sorts of stars: blue, rose, yellow—strange white stars, thornéd and swift—

now these earthly stars in Spring’s green sky.”

This is the story, the grandmother told the girl one afternoon around the cooking fire.

Two dark ponds, the grandchild’s solemn eyes lifted 

to view the cliffed horizon, the gathering grounds, Camassia.

“As each star fell, and flowers they became,

your great-grandmothers counted them,

asking, ‘Which of these flowers bring us food?”

And the Sky Mother taught that deep under the night-blue Camas,

where wide roots live, there is sustenance.

When the frosts end, and the blue star-flowering comes,

then we People know Our Mother is making quamash,

food for us, the Kalapuya, to dig for,

here by the falling river, here by the short-lived swales, 

here by the sleeping boulders, here by the standing stones.

The southwestern people have the Three Sisters:

Maize, Squash, and Beans—they tell their stories:

how the Three Princesses peered through a hole in the sky,

how they fell into the endless sea, made the earth,

took root, and fed their children.

We of the northwest have these fields, bright with fallen stars.

We heed the warning Coyote gave us. He said this:

'The roots of the blue stars, not the white, are safe to eat.

The white man’s rootlessness brings avarice, sickness and death;

so the white camas can kill with the poison in their roots.'

Yes, we know the trouble the whites bring.

What can we do, but carry on our fishing, hunting,

our gathering, and tell our grandmothers’ stories as long as we can?
The whites come just like falling stars, unbidden, endlessly.

There are so many of them, and we are now so few.

"Then, when twilight fell and indigo shadows deepened, 

grandmother combed the child’s hair, kissing the hillock of her brow, 
wrapping her in a Hudson Bay blanket bought with hides and furs.

The night’s mist chilled; hunger’s pang accompanied the damp.

Grandmother served up camas stew: the warmth of venison and stars.

Body and soul knit together one more day.

~Claire Germain Nail 2017

Authors Note: The color photos are of Camassia, a Nature Conservancy preserve, where you can view the Camassia in bloom (usually late March or early April) and the mothering stones. It is most likely a place where the Kalapuya came to gather their food, the root of the blue camas flower, which is said to taste like a cross between an onion and a potato.