anne • sikking

I write.

My first published poem appeared in 1972 in Messenger of Love, edited by Jamaican thinker Wildorf E Goodison-Orr.

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I cook.

I longed for a spatula even before I could lift a pan.

Sharing food balances writing.

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I quilt.

Making a whole out of fragments satisfies.

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I parent.

Raising children, not all of my own making, has been an education.

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My life has been charmed and blessed. I am fortunate to be here,

to have lived well, met many people, and been to many places. 

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My beginnings were not so happy.

I was an abandoned child of mixed heritage.

Although parents, country, and name were lost to me, 

I was able to recover my name. With one grandparent born on the rez,

another a descendant of the Trail of Tears,

what marked them also marked those of us who followed.

 

Yet I was gathered up by some extraordinary people, to whom I owe the stable platform upon which all else has been built. I celebrate them in my forthcoming memoire.

 

Sometimes blood has nothing to do with love at all.