Wolf and Shadows

Edward L. Edmonds is a professor of education at the University of
Prince Edward Island.

Alternating themes are interwoven in this third book of poems by Duncan
Mercredi. One is a nostalgic yearning to travel back to a former “age
of gold” of his Native ancestors. Yet he knows this is impossible:
“Footsteps I have followed are now faded / now lost / now buried.”
But still he “breathes the life memories bring.” The other theme is
smoldering resentment against a dominant alien culture where “once
more we dance to the white man’s dance.” He asks, “Why are you
trying to make me in your image?” He sees “bodies wasted on city
life.” There is caustic irony in his poem “Hidden Beauty.” It is
sometimes alleged that aboriginal culture is threadbare. Not so, says
Mercredi, who rejoices in an animism where winds, trees, birds, animals
assume a symbolic soul of their own, and celebrates this tradition in
“Dancing on Northern Winds.” By comparison, he thinks the Christian
message has been subverted. Mercredi is a poet by any standard; this is
well proven in his simple song (of praise) to “mother earth”; or,
yet again, in the pure lyricism of “Meadow Lark.”