Part I
Breathing Shadows Into Stone
On the first day of summer, slow down
below the drone of tires on asphalt
rushing into Winslow. Slow down
below contrails slicing the blue underbelly
of heaven as they roar off to Denver.
On a sandstone panel sunlight enters
a spiral pecked into blind rock
centuries ago. Go below
the fuzzy black and yellow buzz
of a bumblebee. Go way down
under the skitter of a sagebrush lizard
doing push-ups on a hot slab of afternoon.
Down below gray vulture wings surfing
spiral updrafts. Know saltbush and sand
are your sole companions. Now
your breath slows down
and your backbone starts to hum
the same song the stone sings.
Go down with the breath
of boulders exhaling eternity
once every century.
A shadow is another matter
flowing its trickling rivulet of sighs
from an underground spirit.
Fall into it, and you float
among spindrift stars
to the next life.
Atop a scrub oak knoll at the bottom
of an evergreen bowl of mountains
slow motion dreams
surround, a drowsy image:
a wall of a village builds
from granite blocks, blocks which began
to tumble over over
seven centuries ago. Stop &
smell smoke stalking
from a juniper fire. Hear
laughter of children who dropped
to dust skitter in the dust &
laughter of ancestors
in the sky’s breath. Young men go off
to hunt, while elders inside
a kiva stir live coals-- unearth
blood-born storm clouds forming
in the ashes. Up from the creek
a woman with bare breasts shining
with sweat slips on the path. Her ocher jar
of water makes a parabolic arc
from her brief epoch, near
perfect in spirit, to ours
enduring the distance forged
tools ratchet inside
our bones. This womb jar catches
& carries to the arid air
we breathe her
hoop
of blue sky, smashes
to shards as the village
evaporates time-lapse
in the time we’ve left
to feel the wet edges.
*Prescott National Forest, Arizona
A Dark Sound In Walnut Canyon*
Despite the light
descending line of the canyon
wren’s tune, walls ground & twisted
up as juniper trunks gray
anciently. Tucked underneath tight
limestone overhangs, fingerprints
in the mortar of a spring
morning eight centuries dry
identify the stone mason
whose bones feed the dust
we breathe. The monument’sbrochure tells how
her desiccated hand sells
for 65 cents just
moments ago in the slow river
our time spans. Circling inside
a hungry shadow
of a vulture, her spirit’s harder
to extract than the meat
of a black walnut. This canyon
of Sinaguan buff’s abandoned
hoodoo island on the heart
wears
a dark necklace
of echoes --home
upon hushed home--
in ruins. Stillher impressions fresh
as the hour she went down
to the water to drink
in the fire of those Indian
paintbrushes (her torches
toward a nether forever)
flower.
*Walnut Canyon National Monument, about 10 miles east of Flagstaff, Arizona
The River Rounded At Tuzigoot
Down from Mars Hill
where Pluto got plucked
from a glacial lake of star shards
between the great wars, we fall
off the Colorado Plateau.
Whispers of thirsty shades
hackberry & sycamore make
down the crooked flow
of El Río de los Reyes
usher us through a gilded dream
of home. Between the vortices’
red rock hum & these
copper-backed Black Hills
of Anglo Jerome, Sinagua ruins crown
a lost ridge of paradise.Ram’s horn cornucopia: corn
beans & squash, pit-baked hearts
of agave cactus, acorns
or piñon nuts, stewing
lambsquarters, saltbush
or cholla buds, rice grass
& prickly pear, jackrabbits
or mule deer-- all
fed near spirits
of infants buried (with parrots!)
beneath the pueblo floor.Why then abandon these living bones
they loved, this land
of bloodstone & blue sky?“Various causes have been proposedSkimming the guidebook we grasp
such as drought, water logging
of the soil, disease, warfare,
invasion and dissolution
of trade networks.
But none seem to provide
an adequate explanation.”
a metal railing climbing
the tower of mortared limestones
the river rounded at Tuzigoot. On top
priests prayed for She-rain
& pollen mist to bless long ago
each field with green tongues.
What failed? Between spirit ways
of Wolf & Badger, abalone shells
& macaw feathers adorned
stories star-drawn in circles
of underworld kivas:the Feathered Serpent comes!With a smoking mirror
on his chest & stiff black hair
on a jutting chin,the Feathered Serpent comes!With a right-sided grin
swimming hard the cold white ooze
on his squawfish face,the Feathered Serpent comes!With a stick of silver
to slash yucca blossom necks
off their tender stalks,the Feathered Serpent comes!With a sickness worming
inside his two-fisted heart
only gold will cure,the Feathered Serpent comesas a man! With armies of men battling
evil for good, the Feathered Serpent comes
rattling scales of blinding armor across
New Spain’s staked plains.
A luster of avarice salts
the conquistador’s wounds with stars
falling over bloody ice.
The lava sunset peaks
of Sierra Sin Agua host
spiral roads of katsina feet, flow
a river of prayer long ago
before la Entrada.
We can’t begin
to understand what
subtle resonance their red cycle
of life sung. Feathered spirits
now dance in a rainbow plaza
of spinning planets. Spruce-ringed
feet drum the earth, kicking loose
storm clouds of dust, nebulae
of dreams. We can’t begin
to understand what
underworld ending we begin
in our martial yearning
for understanding.
Close the book.
Upon this high desert
marine fossils echo
a Third World light. Wait
another thousand years....
Waves
now begin to break
into cloud katsina songs
upon our thirsty ears.
NOTES: Tuzigoot National Monument near Cottonwood, Arizona is the site where the ancient people archaeologists call the Sinagua (Spanish for “without water”) lived in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Tuzigoot is an Apache word meaning “crooked water.” In 1930 Pluto was discovered at Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff. El Río de los Reyes (“river of the kings”) is the original name of the Verde River. In the late nineteenth century the United Verde Copper Company opened a mine which created the boom town of Jerome, Arizona. Sierra Sin Agua is the original name of the San Francisco Peaks. La Entrada refers to the Spanish incursion into this territory. According to the Hopi (the descendants of the Sinagua), the “Third World” is the preceding epoch which was destroyed by a deluge. We are now living at the end of the Fourth World.
Echoes Through Canyon De Chelly
-1-Manganese streaks red
sandstone canyon walls the way
arc after arc of thunderhead streamers
falls-- brushing “desert varnish”
from a lone house of snow on the rim
to fields bubbling up sunrise green
corn below. Foreshortened riders
on Navaho horses follow serpentine
olive trees, cottonwoods & tamarisks
twisting past. Swirling waters
in stone, lines of dunes frozen
by late Permian winds curve
our current crow-fly vision.
-2-As a few Diné kids go
to their mother’s hogan, taboo shadows
a thousand years long cling
to the buff-colored cliff
houses of the Ancient Ones. Tower
of stone dwarfed by a stone overhang
of time still stands
abandoned, echoes through time
late morning sheep bells & voices
a thousand years deep.
-3-Look back through the T
-shaped window within
a spalled masonry
wall. With hushed shades
of sleep their slow afternoon
intones, a few wind-hewn
stone men (the same moment
our century crusades) paint
egg white & ocher
concentric rings or palm prints
splayed upon a light rain
-ribboned face-- the sun-polished
cheekbone of Grandmother Canyon.
Spider-wise, her spirit crawls
over the dark pueblo-- blood
colors & thunder blessing
her slickrock road.
-4-Look again &
elders look back
another thousand years
deep. In the mother kiva
they sing & drum together
with their Ancient Ones, the ones
living in the evening dream
of the oldest kiva-- holiest
of holies, ring within
ring. The oldest echoes
nearest their spirits spanning
the life of Grandmother Canyon.
From the bone-clean top
of Spider Rock to her mouth webbed
with graffiti, Bud cans & butts:
the Rainbow Road echoes
a thousand years swirling past
their drum song, painting
our long road home.
Where unchristened trails of phratries crossed
(Sinagua & Kayenta, Hohokam & Cohonina)
febrile tendrils of kiva fire still flow
down flute breath feather snakes’
tap route Sipapu beneath
the Colorado Plateau: grand canon
of afterlife or priorbirth, oneiric underworld
where Masau’u the Skeleton Man meets
in the flesh his alter ego (godseye to I)
upon a paho altar of salt
quests through Vishnu schist.Who is thisfrom the red corn south basaltic black
Hisatsinom who wandered
away so long
ago from Wupatki
on a spiral journey
through sun & bloodstone
to follow Pahana
the Elder White Brother emerged
from the First World
below? Where
cinders with apocalyptic aa meet
Moenkopi sandstone, honeycombed by the flood
of a billion summer dog stars buzzing
moonless monsoon nights, pitch pine
upon red slab, above the northmost ball court
on the continent, catching ritual rain, these tall houses
of Pueblo Wupatki rose. In the smoking shadow
Palotsmo cast on Kana-a lava flow
ejecta, a crow wings obsidian bonito over
a Cloud Katsina Clan’s prayer dance
on clear air. Over this rainbow Painted Desert
vista, rippling wet indigo with vermilion
erosion of dire sunset firefall, fumarole
mist & cave ice glaze, glacial outwash
layered by hot ash, from Kaibab limestone
fissures to a squash blossom ball court built
by the village blowhole blessed
with corncobs & pollen, Yopontsa, sage
spirit of vitrified wind carries
a mask muffled prayer from the Sacred Peaks’
granite pyramid through this delta age dreaming
Precambrian strata cross-bedded down
the Tusayan’s cañon origin:O sprouting godA hoop of water, lightning kiva ladder
Muwingwa!
We pray you dip
your great sprinkler
of heaven feathers
in the sky-lakes’ fire
to bring us sacred rain.
We pray you make
winter earth ready
for summer air
to bring us sacred corn.
O Muwingwa!
Hear our prayer
sprouting god!
to chthonic thunder, a katsina wheel driving
Hopi prophecy from that first Hisatsinom here
to my mechanically Manichean Mazda.Who is thisA ring of hands evaporating, wrenches
Anglomakarian who blundered
into Tierra Zona
to stumble on ruin rubble, sifting
red dust for a ghost of a face
singing away
eight hundred years
a familiar prayer for Nakwach, the clutch
of white palm on red?
elemental balance in a hell-bent mental break
dance down to the third Fourth World
war: a purification
ocher ghosts burn in
to the bone.Go down> Go down> Go down> Go down>
after that Yucatan game’s (sacrifice
naught but sweat) whack & thuk, go
after Crow Clan names, dark-skinned
wind up Mishongnovi now, deep song
the blowhole shivers, rain breath
of dark earth, mother tongues deep within
feeling out: I am Mud Woman.
I am Gray Wolf. (Down there or
me kneeling the high desert, lone lobo licking
cool air elixir?) Hear our prayer
in the rearview reverse the obvious
obverse pueblo flux, spiraling back
the rainbow banded cañon where
one spirit village dream still lives
on white steam of rabbit stew. Hear our prayer
from solar slickrock pool to adobe roof
of liquid moon song’s abode. Going back
to sacred source of blue corn growing
a kernal of sky, hear our prayer--
who snake vernal water spirits down
feather breath mother routes’ low
pressure expiration, yellow lupus eyeteeth
or high on red inhalation fire up
half-life Third World eternal
combustion or bust
out here-- our prayerlaughing
breath bubbles
up rhizome
fissure fires
laughing
death home!
NOTES: Wupatki is the pueblo in north-central Arizona which began construction in the late 11th century and was abandoned by the mid-13th century. Sinagua, Kayenta Anasazi, Hohokam, and Cohonina are the terms archaeologists give to the native groups that came together at Wupatki and surrounding ruins, which are located near the volcanic cinder cone called Sunset Crater (in Hopi named Palotsmo) and the San Francisco Peaks, the sacred mountains where the katsinas live during half the year. Hisatsinom is the name the Hopi give to their ancient ancestors, rather than the Dineh (Navaho) word Anasazi, which means “ancient enemies.” Kana-a is the Hopi word for cloud katsina. Yopontsa is the wind god who lives at the base of Sunset Crater. Tusayan is the Spanish term which refers to the Hopi, literally “people of the corn.” The prayer to Muwingwa, the god of germination, was transliterated from J.W. Powell’s Canyons of the Colorado. Anglomakarian is a portmanteau-- makar being the Greek word for poet. Nakwach is the secret handshake of brotherhood that Pahana, the Lost White Brother, will use when he returns to be reunited with the Hopi at the Time of the Purification. Settled c. A.D. 1200, Mishongnovi is the “guard village” on Second Mesa that watches for Pahana’s return, which contemporary Hopi elders say is imminent.
“The Hopi land is the Hopi religion.Weaving a spiral
The Hopi religion is bound up
in the Hopi land.”
Andrew Hermequaftewa
-1-
spell, wandering centuries
the Four Corners, leaving
footprints, rock art & broken pots
among red stone cities exquisitely
hefted into being, the Hisatsinom kept
sinking sinking sinking
sacred roots
into the future, into the inner
chamber of nature-- kiva hearts manifesting
swastika fire & Blue Star prophecies
from darkness, mycelial dampness.
The Hisatsinom kept
moving moving moving
not for water nor from spread
of war but to make
a kitsoki-- another thread
in the matrilineal design
of a spirit shawl they kept
weaving, a mother shrine on the land
they kept traveling, a liquid line
they kept makingsacred. Arriving at Oraibi*, “the place
where roots solidify,” luminous colors
of an underworld blanket (reflected
upward to their new home) blessed
this mesa. The Plumed Snake’s
scales still glitter
sacred rain.
-2-Today we see (as if
a museum piece) that blanket: faded
photos of all the Anasazi
sites we covet, all the mute ruins
we’ve ever walked, those empty rooms
deja vu tries to fill, a bricolage
of undanced steps & bricks
still standing (four times longer
than our republic.) Still
standing against the polished agate
of our lenses’ polarized blue: bone
whistles & stone tools, eagle feathers & turquoise
jewelry, cedar spindles & abalone, dreamed tableaux
of village afternoons, turkey vulture drowsy
plaza gossip, sibilant whispers etched
like water serpent petroglyphs
on the cloud breath windwe almost remember. Each thread
becoming a part
of the tattered pattern
the whole cloth sings
down below
beyond
death
mist: the dark home
they go
to wrap up
within
ancestral
welcome.
The Hisatsinom keep
warm.
*Located on Third Mesa, Oraibi (O-rye-bee) is the oldest continuously inhabited community in the Western Hemisphere, established c. 1120 AD.
Part II
Serpent Mound Journeys
“On the prairies they stopped again.“Just a mound o’ dirt
The Snake Clan especially wanted to leave
its footprint here, but there were no cliffs
on which to mark the picture writing.
So the people left their signature
in the shape of a great mound of earth
resembling a snake.”
Book of the Hopi
shaped like a serpent,”
the Rocky Fork Store clerk hisses
when you ask the way.
Rolling over Ohio back roads’
white porch farmhouse dogstar cornrows &
Mailpouch tobacco barns
fading, your car rusts into bluegrass
toward the Snake. Morning dripping
gray sky, you near the ring
graben, hear the crypto-
explosion echo down
coils of deep time.Past mounds of the dead, you tread
where angels fear-- Eden
as Rev. West sermonized
right here. Grab the tail
of the great snake, yellow clay
Father Snake, feel
headward surge
of serpent lightning.
Circumambulate
Feather Snake, purge
each chakra chochmo curve--
thunder number seven
takes off
your head, takes you
to the mouth, the egg
in the mouth
of Father Snake, the sun
swallowed whole
summer solstice eve.
Above the snake
garden in Adams County
rises
just a mound
of love, just a mouth
to the dead
you tread, a spermatid
your love said
eyeing the aerial
photo ex post facto.
Vagina katsina (blue violet
Ruellia flowers echo) flecks
dew drops on deep green
swarded yellow back
of Father Snake, rainbow girded
manito snake, paho feathered
Tokchi’i, red talking guardian
of the East. Line migrations’ gyre
tail tip up with copperhead
to point out Polaris, poison
of stasis. His tongue strikes
west, the way the Lost White Brother
with seed sack sprouting fire
comes.
His tongue strikes fire.
Father Feather Snake
in the guardian garden rises
over dolomite bedrock, ignites
the falling night.
In your oval eye
his tongue strikes fear.
His tongue strikes fear.
His tongue strikes fear.
His tongue strikes fear
dead. You tread
with feather feet
the air. Father Snake spirals
up your chakra tree--
shaking
the last days
of spiritual hunger
before the holy host
Pahana comes &
your eye strikes fire.
NOTES: chochmo-- (Hopi) mud mound; katsina, kachina-- spirit of invisible life forces; manito, manitou-- (Algonquian) an object engendering spiritual awe or reverence, a fetish; paho-- prayer feather; Tokchi’i-- Hopi reference to the serpent effigy near Locust Grove, Ohio
Subdivisions bivouac hummocks
all around, but this hill’s still full:
squawbush & buckbrush, cliffrose, catclaw
acacia & manzanita, chokecherry, bear
grass & prickly pear, mistletoe in emory oak,
palo duro & spanish bayonet, piñon
& blackjack pine, fern, junipers & buff
granite boulders map lichened & mottled
light-green & ground moss
very verde-velvet.Squirrel scurries &
croaking crow wings
buffet the air with the
foof foof foof
a boomerang makes.
You clamber up the jumble
geologic ages scramble.
Then you see them
eighty miles away
floating
volcanically coned
in the blue: snow
peaks-- the katsinas’
home! Now
you know
the earth again
is new &
you are
floating
home
again:
your death
your friend.
A Light Mist of Hopi Numinosity
In the distance an instance
bigger than beautiful, wider
than years being human, roomier
than this view, “very something”: blue
mesa on mesa on mesa en
masse, deeper than scenery-- a'ni
himu. Land spans life
dances day-long with
masks (“friends”) into. Plazas
fill with spirits. Skies
spill Cloud People. Fields
rustle arms wet & green
as that first time
lover, the sweet mist
of Sand Altar Woman
on butterfly lips.
Up on First Mesa, past
black wires & water pipes
of Hano & Sichomovi, smile
masked hawkers’ katsina dolls
from hoods of cars, burnt out
cropping this coarse cob
isthmus, beyond our taciturn
tour guide’s “Non-Indians not allowed
at Niman dances,” her
sandstone basins water pools
centuries deep, gap
end to seasons’ drought, slab
upon slab, over the narrow knuckle
of rock, piki bread & piñon
smoke, blue mongrel drowsing
shadows empty plaza
afternoon, kiva viga
hauled from peaks’ high
snows, plaster flaked
long agoes flutter
nameless now, cliff wings above
stair steps down, cedar ladder
balanced, on fingertip
the highest house, the open door, the
brother voice within
a dim room in time melting
our walking:*Hopi Reservation, Arizona"Welcome to Walpi!"
And the wind that gathers the breath
of a thousand springs sweeps
clean the path
from his house to ours.
Into the plaza the sun’s veined hand
swirls like crystal rain in sandstone
basins color on color: cotton cloth
& painted mask, kilt & feather, breath
of muffled song. Kit fox
fur skin trails behind, scarlet
sash with turquoise pendant
in front. Spruce ruff & rainbow
parrot plumes flutter. Squash gourd rattles
sizzle through low corn chant & thunder. Urges
force bean growth forth from dry earth
to green warmth as snake-strike lightning
cleaves blue clouds down a round
horizon’s selvage stitched with darkness.The great katsina wheel turns
upon heartbeats slow as seasons
dancing. Stately as star spirits
spinning the heavens of elders, dancers
wheel as one through the blood
vultures’ afternoon drone
of a lone cottonwood drum.In cosmos mundane chaos muddles
this circle’s sacred middle: Tsuku
yellow clay belly clowns strut, suck
cigarettes or cans of Coke, bob balloon
blond quips. Monikers in black
laugh across each back, names like:Dumb Boss What Am I? AbsentParody of Pahana, they poke
Mind B-Yee What Do I Know?
fat upon one whirly polly, rasp ribs
of another scrawny bird-leg, screech & deride
the great katsina wheel whichturns turns inside turns inside out
the ancient journey from parrot jungles
to Second Mesa’s blessing rain.
*Shungopovi is a village on the Hopi Reservation. Pahana is the Hopi word for “white man.”
Dancing Time In Old Oraibi
(A Rainbow Chant for the Hopi)
In the oldest village yellow dust whirls past
Chakwaina Katsina ’round the short rainbow plaza wheels
In the oldest village blue dust whirls past
Chakwaina Katsina long hair & black mask wheels
In the oldest village red dust whirls past
Chakwaina Katsina diamond teeth & dangling tongue wheels
In the oldest village white dust whirls past
Chakwaina Katsina yellow eyes of half-moon wheels
In the oldest village in the oldest village
Dancing dust whirls past past Old Oraibi
In the oldest village blue dust whirls past
Chakwaina Katsina the black Pahana wheels
In the oldest village red dust whirls past
Chakwaina Katsina the arrogant giant wheels
In the oldest village white dust whirls past
Chakwaina Katsina the Moor Estevan wheels
In the oldest village yellow dust whirls past
Who is Estevan Estevan Estevan wheels
In the oldest village in the oldest village
Dancing dust whirls past past Old Oraibi
In the oldest village red dust whirls past
Chakwaina Katsina sacred bow & rattle wheels
In the oldest village white dust whirls past
Chakwaina Katsina double diamond clan kilt wheels
In the oldest village yellow dust whirls past
Chakwaina Katsina cowrie-tinkling bandoleer wheels
In the oldest village blue dust whirls past
Chakwaina Katsina tortoise shell foot clacker wheels
In the oldest village in the oldest village
Dancing dust whirls past past Old Oraibi
In the oldest village ’round the short rainbow plaza
Dancing dust slows time slows time slows time down
Except when Koshari clowns black on white show up
In the oldest village ’round the short rainbow plaza
Dancing dust slows time slows time slows time down
Except when Kokopelli’s stiff poker shows up
In the oldest village ’round the short rainbow plaza
Dancing dust slows time slows time slows time down
Except when the Ogre’s butcher knife shows up
Chakwaina Katsina wheels past past Old Oraibi
In the oldest village ’round the short rainbow plaza
Chakwaina Katsina whirls past past white Oraibi
Dancing time slows dust down in the oldest village
Chakwaina Katsina whirls past past yellow Oraibi
Dancing time slows dust down in the oldest village
Chakwaina Katsina whirls past past blue Oraibi
Dancing time slows dust down in the oldest village
Chakwaina Katsina whirls past past red Oraibi
Dancing time slows dust slows dust slows dust down
In the oldest village Chakwaina Katsina
’round the short rainbow plaza
Chakwaina Kachina in the oldest village
In the oldest village past Old Oraibi
Dancing dust whirls as the Mudhead drums
Chakwaina Katsina wheels past
Another Otherworldly Journey
(A Hopi Home Going Dance)
Sunlight on turquoise steps, tablitas
of the Hemis katsinas rise
in a line of thunderheads advancing
over a tumbled sandstone mesa.
Spruce rain echoes
the long awaited manna
of distant mountain rainbows.
Dancing from red sunup
to violet sundown, spirit voices
of the Hemis katsinas chant
low otherworldly undertones.
Subterranean chambers flood
blue fire streams fluid
as lucid dreams shimmering
leaves of speckled corn.
Gourd rattles shake dry seeds
of an earlier world reeling in time
to the kneeling Maiden katsinas.
Their round rain makers rasp
the bloody footsteps Masau’u makes
upon the cloudy inside of the skull.
Deer hooves on right knees
clacking, dark bodies
of the Hemis katsinas lean
toward the thirsty earth, footsteps
pressing their prayers
downward, downward, downward...
Through horizontal eye-slits
in cylindrical helmits, they peer
downward
as if the dance plaza had turned
into a sheet of water
welling up from an underworld
whirlpool of foaming stars.
In deepening dusk, forming
a double line in single file,they face westward
to bless the village bridesin white robes. In return
they are given pollenfor the journey homeward.
They are given pahosfor the journey homeward.
They are bathed with sacred pipe smokefor the yearly journey homeward.
They are cooled with feather-waterfor the yearly journey homeward.
Monsoonal cloudburstsclose this ritual cycle as spirit bodies
of the Hemis katsinas flowout of the dance plaza
into the night shadows
gathering
for another otherworldly journey
homeward.
NOTES: tablita (or tableta)-- a brightly painted, vertical extension of the headdress; Hemis (or Jemez) katsina-- the Ripened Corn katsina, the principal masked dancer in the Niman ceremony performed in July; Masau’u-- god of the earth, death, and the Underworld; paho-- a prayer-feather offering
The Romantic Zero
(Between a Pristine Morning & the Tonight Show)
O to be circling
back to the place one’s race once
emerged: out of the dark
red Vishnu schist a hollow reed
sipapu rooted (badger-headed)
to the First World below.
O to be circling back
to the rainbow-banded canyon
where a spirit pueblo lives
on steam of prayers & rabbit stew.
O to see through
the white noise of night’s machinery
to a day’s honey buzz
in the village hive of everlight.
O to be going back
to the source of blue corn, growing
inside a kernel of sky.
O to go circling
circling circling circling
slickrock pool to adobe roof
as liquid round songs’ abode.
O to be drinking
clay pipes’ smoke.
O to be blessing
spirit roads with breath
feathers, corn meal & medicine water.
O to go far beyond
a census of heartbeats
to drum so near
the oldest blood singing
deep stone.
O to go down
a ladder of sunlight
to the Western Kiva & dawn
of a katsina domain.
O to be going home
with cotton cloud mask
& eagle down
whispers at ankles & wrists.
O to remember
the Cloud People once lived
in our house, sipped water
to circle our blood
in their veins.
O to be dancing
an underworld winter away
as thunderheads over the mesa
gather summer long yellow ear
paho sticks & pollen songs.
O to see beyond
cobweb lightning
binding horizons beyond
horseless wagons on black ribbons beyond
sky trails & metal houses
drifting through dust devils
of stars blooming beyond
the four-armed gourd
of ashes in a blue Nova
on concrete blocks out back.
Yet zero to know
the deadpan host
better than our father, remember
not Spider Grandmother tales but
midnight punch lines after
we’ve all signed off-- each race
(Hopi and Pahana) lost
to the other on the two-lane highway
to the lowest solstice sunset.
She Wore a Metal Helmet
(Lori Ann Piestewa, 1979-2003)
In the desert of forgotten spirits
a young Hopi woman wanders.
In the Painted Desert
near a stacked stone pueblo
bathed in piñon smoke, a babe
of the Bear Clan was born
Qotsa-hon-mana.
In the cradled desert
near An Nasiriyah, a Hopi
Catholic single mom
turned Army private
took a wrong turn
in a humvee. In the desert
of apocalyptic sand storms
and whirlwind jinns,
her bubbly Army buddy
from Palestine, West
Virginia was rescued via Delta force
from an enemy Baathist
hospital bed. (It was later made
into a TV movie
of Pentagon propaganda.) Instead
"White Bear Girl" lay
under a black shawl of dust
in a mass grave shallow
as a shadow. Her blood-name
means "water
pooled on the desert
after a hard rain."Butterfly Warrior of the People of Peace.
First American servicewoman sacrificed
in the naked frontal attack
on Iraq. First Native American woman
to expire on the ambushed battlefield
of patriarchal pillage. (Her vice
president neo-concocted in wet dreams
this nightmare.) Far from her mother village
on Middle Mesa, Arizona, she fell
into a firefight of arabesque lines
unraveling. Her elders failed to foresee
she'd sip her last breath
near the bricked ziggurat of Ur
cuneiform prayers of clay climbed
with their moon god Sin--
cold crystalline trellises
of midnight. Crossing
a spiked vista of Joshua trees
and mirages, her forebears spiraled
petroglyph ages with their sun god
Taawa. A red taproot
three thousand years deep
reaches from thirsty stars
into the desert of a nation
not three hundred years old.
A wormhole sipapuni*
in Eden's apple stretches
from Tikrit to Tuba City,
from the Little Zab
to the Little Colorado,
from the Zagros range
of Kurdistan to salt caves
of Grand Canyon.Hopi legends say, when
Horny Toad Woman spoke
to Masau'u, god of death
who rules the earth, about the future
crisis in the desert,
she, too, wore a metal
helmet.In the desert forgotten spirits remember
a young Hopi woman
wanders
homeward, where
netherworld ancestors wait
with eyes of mist, hair
of rain clouds
falling.
*In the Hopi belief system a sipapuni is a subterranean tunnel leading to the Afterlife.
In Their Last Few Forevers
The Shuttle crew glances out the left windshield.
Dawn shadows snake purple and gold
through Grand Canyon. Down hidden chambers
of stone pueblos built while the first Crusades raged,
Hopi elders make prayer feathers. Quietly they prepare
for the coming Purification. When humans begin
to live in the sky, this Fourth World of ours
will end, they say. A heat tile falls off, lands
in the plaza where the Blue Star Katsina dances.
The Shuttle already soars above the white dishes
of the Very Large Array. Another square tile falls
in the Rio Grande. A toxic chunk of charred metal
plummets to a ranch in Crawford, Texas.
Stetsons in Dallas lift to the heavens.
The Katsina removes his mask and the dance
stops.
In our last few forevers, counting their blessings
among the stars of Orion, seven souls turn
into fireballs. Our dreams trail in their vapors
and fade on the pale eggshell of morning.
Hymn to Red Tawa
No burning ball of gas.
No, the sun is a maskwhose eagle feathers radiate
a white circle of compassion.The sun is a katsina mask
who speaks heliotropicallyto you atop a butte.
Standing with the sun risingred across the Painted Desert
you make a temporal ripplewhich makes a woman grinding corn
look up from her stone700 years ago, thinking
she heard a dance rattle.Blue corn, red sun.
We make a temporal ripplewe are that close. A spiral
petroglyph radiates from the heartof the galaxy. We are that close.
The heart of the Christos, BuddhaAmitaba, the Creator Tawa speaks
through a mask of compassionno burning ball of gas
shall ever wear. A white circleof eagle feathers speaks
to you atop a butte.To her grinding corn
he speaks heliotropically.To you standing alone
with the sun rising redfrom the burning heart
of the Painted Desert he speaks:No death shall dance your life.
No death shall dance your life.In either time
look up from your stone.Look up from your poem.
We are red sun, blue corn, thinkingwe heard a dance rattle
the katsina of compassionshakes & shakes.
The katsina of the temporal ripplegrinds & grinds. Still
no death shall dance your life.No death shall dance your life
in either time.No burning ball of gas
shall know: The sun is a maskthe Creator of compassion
speaks through. Heliotropicallywe are all that close. At the heart
of a spiral petroglyphthe galaxy speaks.
Through a white circleof rising feathers
the sun katsina speaks:No death shall dance your life.
No death shall dance your life.
No death shall dance your life.
No death shall dance your life.
Copyright © 2000-2006 by Gary David
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