Grandfather’s Prayer — Wintu

Sugar-pine and deer are safe from me now. They rest easy in the mountains. Oak trees in the grasslands, the birds, the rabbits, they don’t owe me anything anymore. Salmon swimming in the streams are safe from my net. They have other places they need to go. Now I am old, but I am here between grandchildren and ancestors. I hear them singing to me. I am between the mountains, the grasslands, and the valleys; they are all singing my song. I wash my face in the morning. North and south, east and west, I bow as the winds blow.