Half-breeds not otherwise counted

Thus, in the florid script of 1870—
ink now well-faded—the census taker
for King County, Washington Territory,
has listed the names on a page titled
“Half-breeds not otherwise counted.”
 
The names have blurred—a flock of birds
lost in fog. One clear name: “Mathilda,”
age one year. On the line above, Mary,
her mother, 18, surname illegible—
another lost bird. I know these two names.
 
Thus, in the florid script of 1870
are my kin accounted for, more or less,
in the mundane archives of life on earth,
with its cave paintings,  pyramids, gods,
computers, WMDs, self-driving cars.
 
Somewhere along the line, Mathilda,
now 20, marries a Swede—something Lindstrom,
a fisherman, owner of a skiff in which to skim
the turgid waters of the Duwamish River,
netting sockeyes and silvers when, then,
 
the river hummed, clear as quartz.
I’ll never know what Mathilda looked like.
Her skin would have been tawny, cedar-
hinted, her hair night-sky dark and thick.
Even at one, her eyes would be hungry,
 
bright as her Haida mother’s, opened wide
to taste the colors and sounds of the world,
to drink in the new thing called light—
łúkwał, in Lushootseed, a tongue
she may have never learned or heard.
 
In 1911, Mathilda, dying at 41,
lays herself down on a mat of ferns
on the river shore. She hears the voices
of rocks, trees, the green song of moss
on the alders. She listens to Lindstrom
 
call to the salmon in Swedish,  kom lax,
hears the thunka-thunka of the skiff’s engine,
Lindstrom baling with a coffee tin,
hauling hand-over-hand a net to draw in
his catch, watched over by reeling gulls—
 
a frenzy of sobs just over his head.
Mathilda dies in the twilight of a slack tide,
not far from Point No-Point. Dying, she hears
the tide turn, hears Lindstrom’s broken whisper,
My darling, must you leave so soon?
 
Thus, in the florid script of 1870, is Mathilda,
now and for all time, listed on a page titled
“Half-breed not otherwise counted.” I’ve revised
the page to include a one-year-old girl’s eyes,
opened wide to drink in the new thing called light.