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“savage brat,” and so she gave up her son. At just around two years old, little John Akins, named after his daddy, was abandoned.
    Nanny always referred to her daddy, my great-grandfather, as Poppa John. He was reared by former slaves who had just been freed. He was a half-breed; his mother was German, and his father, a Cherokee man, was dead. Nobody would take him, so this black family with few material possessions nurtured him with love. As far as he was concerned, this was his family. Eventually, Poppa John's biological aunt pieced together what had happened to her nephew and made contact. They developed some semblance of a family connection, and much later on in life, after Poppa John had created many children who loved him with a wife he adored, named Ellen, his little German mother reentered his life. Because not one of herwhite kin would take her in, this tiny woman in her eighties, standing four foot nine inches, demanded a room at Ellen and Poppa John's. When Poppa and my mother would start giggling up a storm, I would hear my mom say, “Oh, Poppa, you shouldn't say that.” And I always knew they were talking about that mean little woman. At that point Nanny would join in the giggling and say, “Mary Ellen, I know it's an awful thing to say, but what Poppa says about old Granny is the truth, but I'll let him say it 'cause he's a goin’ to hell anyways.” Poppa would chirp right up and look down at the ground and say, “I'm addressin’ you, Granny, where I think ya gone. Ya was as mean as a snake in life that even the snakes won't take ya now. I'm tellin’ ya the truth, Shug. I was sure she was that mean old biddy from ‘Hansel and Gretel,’ and I never let yer mama anywhere near Granny because I knew she'd likely turn her into Mary Ellen pie.”
    Poppa John was a woodcarver and made furniture. The chair that old Granny sat in all those years ago, having been taken in by the little boy she'd abandoned, sits in my beach house. It was lovingly made for her little size by Poppa John. This was in the Carolinas, near the Eastern Cherokee Nation. They all eventually settled right outside Charlotte to work in the mills in Catawba County, ancestral land of the Catawba tribe. I was born in Catawba General Hospital.
    The Cherokee land … I heard about the broken treaties all my life, from my grandfather, and then my mother, who can go on and on and on concerning the details; she knows a lot about it. The idea that your possessions can be taken, your land can be taken from you, has been fundamental to me and has made me very clear about what I own spiritually. And I refuse to let anybody be able to take my sacred ground. You can take my land, but not my sovereignty, my inner sacred ground. That's what my grandfather held on to with his stories; what my mother kept with her books that she memorized, so that if they were taken from her, or burned,the words would be emblazoned across her heart. Words by Emily Dickinson, by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, by Robert Frost, wove an invisible gown for my magical mother. My mother's family learned through the hardest experience that you must preserve the realms within.

SONG CANVAS: “Ireland”
Hazelnut, the village mutt, lives in a call box in Timoleague, Co. Cork. Two buckets of rose hips sit next to the Aga rangecooker for Dunc's special syrup. Ireland in the summer …
Here is where I seem to remember slices. Here is where I've come to remember Poppa's stories of the Cherokee Nation. Go figure. The Cherokee and Irish have both had their cultures invaded, and maybe that's why they have bonded within my family bloodline—but it's more than that. I don't know if there is something in the water, something in the rain. And jeez. It's been raining. The August fires are burning steadily here in the old Irish house. The tank tops we all brought are whispering warm-weather chants under cardigans. The guys have gone down for a Murphy's or a Guinness on tap, down at Paula's place.