Listen. They are with us.
They are standing with us even now, at your shoulder while
you gather nets, forge steel, harvest crops, lay roads, build houses,
tend homes, raise children or stalk moose through the muskeg bog.
Can you not feel the comforting presence of them watching over you?
Can you not feel the weight of an old and wrinkled hand
upon your shoulder or your brow?
They are with us whether you believe in them or not.
The Old Ones. The ancestors.
Spirit Beings who have travelled onward, outward into the Spirit World
bearing with them the memories, the recollections
and the love they found here in this world, on this land,
hovered over you, telling you by the gift of intuition
that they are here and always will be.
~ Richard Wagamese, from Runaway Dreams