Sleeping Lady
By Reyzl Grace
July 15, 2024
July 15, 2024
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That big ridge going downriver from Dghelishla [Mt. Susitna] all the way to Beluga, they call Ch’chihi Ken [Ridge Where We Cry]. They would sit down there. Everything is in view. They can see their whole country. Everything is just right under them. They think about their brothers and their fathers and mothers. They remember that, and they just sit down there and cry. That’s the place we cry all the time, ’cause everything just show up plain. That’s why they call it Ch’chihi Ken. –Shem Pete
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The child is receiving a lesson in geography,
follows its father’s finger as it traces the ridge
on the other side of the Knik Arm, learns
its English name. Its father doesn’t know
that this is the place the ancestors of the Nulchina clan
descended from the sky on a frozen cloud. He tells
only one version of the best-known legend:
The Dena’ina say that a race of giants
(whom they do not call Nephilim)
inhabited Alaska long ago, and that one
of these was to be a bride, but her beloved
had to go away to battle, and so she lay
down on the spot where they parted, awaiting the return,
and fell asleep. When the news came that all
the party had been killed, the women of the village prayed
that the young woman might never wake, and the gods
agreed to cover her with blankets of flowers and snow.
And so she slept through the coming of the little people
—the Dena’ina, the Russian-American Company,
the gold miners and the US military.
This version of the story makes perfect sense
to the father. But there is another, which does not depend
on a man or a war. In this telling, the woman
is in love with the river—which is also called Susitna—
and lays down so that they cannot be parted.
The child does not learn the Native name
for the long slope toward Beluga, which it comes to know
only as the hair of the Sleeping Lady. It does
not know anything about arctic traditions of shamanism,
or Slavic folktales, or Hasidic teaching on gilgulim
when its spirit leaves its body, flies in an instant
across the Knik Arm, and runs free
over Ch’chihi Ken, tasting berries and squawking
at gulls. From here, it can see both sides
of everything—the Bering Strait, the frozen clouds,
the hand that shields the sabbath candle. Its eyes
look back, at last, across the Knik. The father
is leading the student back to the car, and the child
screams inaudibly under the trudging crunch
of gravel. It lays down on the cold earth,
pulls at the stems and the roots of the flowers, begging
the Lady to wake up—to see that the river
is flowing away—but she does not stir from her dream.
A car door slams. The engine starts.
The child pleads with the gulls, with the puffins, with anyone
who will listen, but the sound of its voice is eaten by the grey
of the sea; the weight of the earth smothers its kinah.
The viewing pullout on the opposite shore is empty,
and the only sound is the sky, laboured and wet.
The child sits and cries. The raven prays for snow.
follows its father’s finger as it traces the ridge
on the other side of the Knik Arm, learns
its English name. Its father doesn’t know
that this is the place the ancestors of the Nulchina clan
descended from the sky on a frozen cloud. He tells
only one version of the best-known legend:
The Dena’ina say that a race of giants
(whom they do not call Nephilim)
inhabited Alaska long ago, and that one
of these was to be a bride, but her beloved
had to go away to battle, and so she lay
down on the spot where they parted, awaiting the return,
and fell asleep. When the news came that all
the party had been killed, the women of the village prayed
that the young woman might never wake, and the gods
agreed to cover her with blankets of flowers and snow.
And so she slept through the coming of the little people
—the Dena’ina, the Russian-American Company,
the gold miners and the US military.
This version of the story makes perfect sense
to the father. But there is another, which does not depend
on a man or a war. In this telling, the woman
is in love with the river—which is also called Susitna—
and lays down so that they cannot be parted.
The child does not learn the Native name
for the long slope toward Beluga, which it comes to know
only as the hair of the Sleeping Lady. It does
not know anything about arctic traditions of shamanism,
or Slavic folktales, or Hasidic teaching on gilgulim
when its spirit leaves its body, flies in an instant
across the Knik Arm, and runs free
over Ch’chihi Ken, tasting berries and squawking
at gulls. From here, it can see both sides
of everything—the Bering Strait, the frozen clouds,
the hand that shields the sabbath candle. Its eyes
look back, at last, across the Knik. The father
is leading the student back to the car, and the child
screams inaudibly under the trudging crunch
of gravel. It lays down on the cold earth,
pulls at the stems and the roots of the flowers, begging
the Lady to wake up—to see that the river
is flowing away—but she does not stir from her dream.
A car door slams. The engine starts.
The child pleads with the gulls, with the puffins, with anyone
who will listen, but the sound of its voice is eaten by the grey
of the sea; the weight of the earth smothers its kinah.
The viewing pullout on the opposite shore is empty,
and the only sound is the sky, laboured and wet.
The child sits and cries. The raven prays for snow.
Reyzl Grace is a poet, translator, short story writer, and post-Soviet lesbian Jew from Alaska. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, named a finalist for the Jewish Women’s Poetry Prize and Best Literary Translations, and featured in Room, Rust & Moth, the Times of Israel, and elsewhere. By day, she is a public librarian in Minneapolis—by night, a poetry editor for Psaltery & Lyre and Cordella. You can find more of her at reyzlgrace.com and on Twitter/Bluesky @reyzlgrace.
Author’s Note:
In English, we use two different words to describe growing in knowledge. “To learn” is from a Germanic root meaning “to find and follow a track.” It is a thing we do ourselves, moving from a periphery of ignorance toward a centre defined by our searching. “To be educated” comes from a Latin root meaning “to lead out.” The word itself is a colonial imposition for a thing that is done to us, drawing us toward a centre another has defined. This poem is about the moment learning and becoming educated shear away from one another--the moment the identity of “student” becomes the antithesis of “child.” It is a poem about growing up at the edge of many worlds and watching the ones you belong to slip away.