a key, perhaps silver coins, a leather wallet.
Folded pieces of paper are still within reach
but the feeling now
is overwhelming
of something no longer with you.
You walk outside
in the dark
feel for the gloves
on the seat of your truck.
Something has been left behind,
something has been lost.
All night in bed beside her
your heart pounds out
possible locations
for a loss so complete
even its name has escaped you.
At dawn she turns in bed and
you see from your place in the bed
the impossibility of this
her hair spreads over your pillow
her arms where yours are resting.
Listen now
before you make any sudden move
for your breathing
which once accompanied you.
Incantation
The television
lights up the room,
a continual presence.
Seconds minutes
flicker in gray intervals
on the wall beside my head.
Even if
I could walk to the window
I would only see
gray video images
bending against the clouds.
At one time
more might have been necessary—
a smokey quartz crystal
balanced in the center of the palm—
But tonight
there is enough.
The simple equation you found
in my notebook
frightened you
but I could have explained it:
After all bright colors of sunset and
leaves are added together
lovers are subtracted
children multiplied, are divided, taken away.
The remainder is small enough
to stay in this room forever
gray-shadowing restless
trapped on a gray glass plain.
I did not plan to tell you.
Better to lose colors gradually
first the blue of the eyes
then the red of blood
its salt taste fading
water gone suddenly bitter
when the last yellow light
blinks off the screen.
Wherever you’re heading tonight
you think you’re leaving me
and the equation of this gray room.
Hold her close
pray
these are lies I’m telling you.
As with the set which lost its color
and only hums gray outlines,
it is a matter of intensity and hue
and the increasing distance—
The interval will grow as imperceptibly
as it grew between us.
You’ll drive on
putting distance and time between us—
the snow in the high Sierras
the dawn along the Pacific
dreaming you’ve left this narrow room.
But tonight
I have traced all escape routes
with my finger across the t.v. weather map.
Your ocean dawn is only the gray light
in the corner of this room
Your mountain snowstorm
flies against the glass screen
until we both are buried.
A Note
They tell you
they try to warn you
about some particular cliff
sandrock a peculiar cloudy dawn color.
It is the place,
they say
where so many others have fallen.
Remember Chemí’s son?
So handsome—
What was it
he wanted up there?
She only came from that direction
one time
and so long ago
no one living
ever heard anyone tell
they saw her.
Don’t go looking
don’t even raise your eyes.
The people believe the cradle board protects a child, and when they place the baby on the cradle board, they speak silently to the cradle board, reminding it to take care of the child. My mother kept me on the cradle board until I was twelve months old.
Mr. Kasero and his wife used to drive their wagon and horses up from Mesita village to Laguna to buy groceries and pick up their mail. One time they gave me a ride in their wagon, and I remember how wonderfully the rocks and bumps in the road could be felt through the wagon box. Mr. Kasero was especially proud of his corn plants one year and asked my father to photograph them. My father asked him if he would be in the picture too, and Mr. Kasero said okay, as long as the corn plants could be seen.
Saturday morning I was walking past Nora’s house
and she was outside building a fire in her oven.
I stopped to say hello and we were talking and
she said her grandchildren had brought home
a library book that had my “Laguna Coyote” poem in it.
“We all enjoyed it so much,
but I was telling the children
the way my grandpa used to tell it
is longer.”
“Yes, that’s the trouble with writing,” I said,
“You can’t go on and on the way we do
when we tell stories around here.
People who aren’t used to it get tired.”
“I remember Grandpa telling us that story—
We would really laugh!
He wouldn’t begin until we gave him
something real good to eat—
roasted piñons or some jerky.
Then he would start telling the story.
That’s what you’re supposed to do, you know,
you’re supposed to feed the storyteller good things.”
One time
Old Woman Ck’o’yo’s
son came in
from Reedleaf town
up north.
His name was Pa’caya’nyi
and he didn’t know who his father was.
He asked the people
“You people want to learn some magic?”
and the people said
“Yes, we can always use some.”
Ma’see’wi and Ou’yu’ye’wi
the Twin Brothers
were caring for the
Mother Corn altar,
but they got interested
in this magic too.
“What kind of medicine man
are you,
anyway?” they asked him.
“A Ck’o’yo medicine man,”
he said.
“Tonight we’ll see
if you really have magical power,” they told him.
So that night
Pa’caya’nyi
came with his mountain lion.
He undressed
he painted his body
the whorls of flesh
the soles of his feet
the palms of his hands
the top of his head.
He wore feathers
on each side of his head.
He made an altar
with cactus spines
and purple locoweed flowers.
He lighted four cactus torches
at each corner.
He made the mountain lion lie
down in front and
then he was ready for his magic.
He struck the middle of the north wall
He took a piece of flint and
he struck the middle of the north wall.
Water poured out of the wall
and flowed down
toward the south.
He said “What does that look like?
Is t
hat magic powers?”
He struck the middle of the west wall
and from the east wall
a bear came out.
“What do you call this?”
he said again.
“Yes, it looks like magic all right,”
Ma’see’wi said.
So it was finished
and Ma’see’wi and Ou’yu’ye’wi
and all the people were fooled by
that Ck’o’yo medicine man,
Pa’caya’nyi.
From that time on
they were
so busy
playing around with that
Ck’o’yo magic
they neglected the Mother Corn altar.
They thought they didn’t have to worry
about anything.
They thought this magic
could give life to plants
and animals.
They didn’t know it was all just a trick.
Our mother
Nau’ts’ity’i
was very angry
over this
over the way
all of them
even Ma’see’wi and Ou’yu’ye’wi
fooled around with this
magic.
“I’ve had enough of that,”
she said,
“If they like that magic so much
let them live off it.”
So she took
the plants and grass from them.
No baby animals were born.
She took the
rain clouds with her.
The wind stirred the dust.
The people were starving.
“She’s angry with us,”
the people said.
“Maybe because of that
Ck’o’yo magic
we were fooling with.
We better send someone
to ask her forgiveness.”
They noticed Hummingbird
was fat and shiny
he had plenty to eat.
They asked how come he
looked so good.
He said
Down below
Three worlds below this one
everything is
green
all the plants are growing
the flowers are blooming.
I go down there
and eat.
“So that’s where our mother went.
How can we get down there?”
Hummingbird looked at all the
skinny people.
He felt sorry for them.
He said, “You need a messenger.
Listen, I’ll tell you
what to do”:
Bring a beautiful pottery jar
painted with parrots and big
flowers.
Mix black mountain dirt
some sweet corn flour
and a little water.
Cover the jar with a
new buckskin
and say this over the jar
and sing this softly
above the jar:
After four days
you will be alive
After four days
you will be alive
After four days
you will be alive
After four days
you will be alive.
On the fourth day
something buzzed around
inside the jar.
They lifted the buckskin
and a big green fly
with yellow feelers on his head
flew out of the jar.
“Fly will go with me,” Hummingbird said.
“We’ll go see
what she wants.”
They flew to the fourth world
below.
Down there
was another kind of daylight
everything was blooming
and growing
everything was so beautiful.
Fly started sucking on
sweet things so
Hummingbird had to tell him
to wait:
“Wait until we see our Mother.”
They found her.
They gave her blue pollen and yellow pollen
they gave her turquoise beads
they gave her prayer sticks.
“I suppose you want something,” she said.
“Yes, we want food and storm clouds.”
“You get old Buzzard to purify
your town first
and then, maybe, I will send you people
food and rain again.”
Fly and Hummingbird
flew back up.
They told the town people
that old Buzzard had to purify
the town.
They took more pollen,
more beads, and more prayer sticks,
and they went to see old Buzzard.
They arrived at his place in the east.
“Who’s out there?
Nobody ever came here before.”
“It’s us, Hummingbird and Fly.”
“Oh. What do you want?”
“We need you to purify our town.”
“Well, look here. Your offering isn’t
complete. Where’s the tobacco?”
You see, it wasn’t easy.
Fly and Hummingbird
had to fly back to town again.
The people asked,
“Did you find him?”
“Yes, but we forgot something.
Tobacco.”
But there was no tobacco
so Fly and Hummingbird had to fly
all the way back down
to the fourth world below
to ask our Mother where
they could get some tobacco.
“We came back again,”
they told our Mother.
“Maybe you need something?”
“Tobacco.”
“Go ask caterpillar.”
So they flew
all the way up again.
They went to a place in the West.
See, these things were complicated.….
They called outside his house
“You downstairs, how are things?”
“Okay,” he said, “come down.”
They went down inside.
“Maybe you want something?”
“Yes. We need tobacco.”
Caterpillar spread out
dry cornhusks on the floor.
He rubbed his hands together
and tobacco fell into the cornhusks.
Then he folded up the husks
and gave the tobacco to them.
Hummingbird and Fly thanked him.
They took the tobacco to old Buzzard.
“Here it is. We finally got it but it
sure wasn’t very easy.”
“Okay,” Buzzard said.
“Go back and tell them
I’ll purify the town.”
And he did—
first to the east
then to the south
then to the west
and finally to the north.
Everything was set straight again
after all that Ck’o’yo magic.
The storm clouds returned
the grass and plants started growing again.
There was food
and the people were happy again.
So she told them
“Stay out of trouble
from now on.
It isn’t very easy
to fix up things again.
Remember that
next time
some Ck’o’yo magician
comes to town.”
Poem for Myself and Mei: Concerning Abortion
Chinle to Fort Defiance, April 1973
The morning sun
coming unstuffed with yellow light
butterflies tumbling loose
and blowing acros
s the Earth.
They fill the sky
with shimmering yellow wind
and I see them with the clarity of ice
shattered in mountain streams
where each pebble is
speckled and marbled
alive beneath the water.
All winter it snowed
mustard grass
and springtime rained it.
Wide fancy meadows
warm green
and butterflies are yellow mustard flowers
spilling out of the mountain.
There were horses
near the highway
at Ganado.
And the white one
scratching his ass on a tree.
They die softly
against the windshield
and the iridescent wings
flutter and cling
all the way home.
Tony’s Story
It happened one summer when the sky was wide and hot and the summer rains did not come; the sheep were thin, and the tumbleweeds turned brown and died. Leon came back from the army. I saw him standing by the Ferris wheel across from the people who came to sell melons and chili on San Lorenzo’s Day. He yelled at me, “Hey Tony—over here!” I was embarrassed to hear him yell so loud, but then I saw the wine bottle with the brown-paper sack crushed around it.
“How’s it going, buddy?”
He grabbed my hand and held it tight like a white man. He was smiling. “It’s good to be home again. They asked me to dance tomorrow—it’s only the Corn Dance, but I hope I haven’t forgotten what to do.”
“You’ll remember—it will all come back to you when you hear the drum.” I was happy, because I knew that Leon was once more a part of the pueblo. The sun was dusty and low in the west, and the procession passed by us, carrying San Lorenzo back to his niche in the church.
“Do you want to get something to eat?” I asked.
Leon laughed and patted the bottle. “No, you’re the only one who needs to eat. Take this dollar—they’re selling hamburgers over there.” He pointed past the merry-go-round to a stand with cotton candy and a snow-cone machine.
It was then that I saw the cop pushing his way through the crowds of people gathered around the hamburger stand and bingo tent; he came steadily toward us. I remembered Leon’s wine and looked to see if the cop was watching us; but he was wearing dark glasses and I couldn’t see his eyes.
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