The Blanket Around Her

The Blanket Around Her


Maybe it is her birth
which she holds close to herself
or her death
which is just as inseparable
and the white wind
that encircles her is a part
just as the blue sky
hanging on turquoise from her neck
oh woman
remember who you are
it is the whole earth


Joy Harjo--Creek

Breaking Illusions

Painting by Howard Terpning


Joy Harjo

Breaking Illusions


One of the most loaded symbols is “Mother”.
Religions have sprung up over the holy symbolic connotations
of Mother. To be Mother is sacrosanct. Mother is sacrifice,
is love without question, is feeding even from one’s own body,
is carrying children and giving birth, is care of the hearth,
is the making of food from the gifts of the earth.
She is the ultimate creative power. Like anything a symbol
embodies its opposite. Mother out of control is supreme control
over her children. She smothers them, she demands absolute
loyalty, and she force-feeds them with guilt and food even
as she eats her children. She is destruction.

Our mothers are demigods until we sprout into our personhood,
our potential mother/fatherhood to take our place. Then,
they become essentially, biologically, rivals. Either we make
friends of our rivals, or we throw them over. Each culture
decides differently. In this larger cultural overlay
of “civilization” that has supplanted our indigenous
cultures children are encouraged to make anyone older the enemy.

And then, as we become mothers (or fathers) the story begins
again, and we make our way.

Smashing those symbols, those illusions and setting free
the people inside them can be liberating, and even so,
absolutely terrifying. Those symbols can be life preservers
in the deep, deep ocean of psychological waves and shifts.

I remember the day I decided to see my mother as a human being.
I chose to see her as a little child, growing up under
the duress of extreme poverty with a mother who didn’t know
how to love. She became a human being, someone on the path
alongside me. She was no longer a towering figure
of perfection gone wrong. I found a way to forgive her,
to forgive myself. Our relationship shifted.
It doesn’t mean that there weren’t transgressions
or failings. There were.
There are.
We are human.

Yesterday I had to face an immense illusion.
I had worked on it for years. Perfected it.
I had carefully built a symbol. I used materials of hope,
and put together a design made of how-I-thought-it-should-be,
and had hammered it together with wishes.
Hammering with wishes is like hammering with handfuls of water.
I had created someone wasn’t there.
And the someone-who-wasn’t-there was who I had imagined
interacting with me, was whom I had been relating to
all this time.

It broke, as such illusions eventually do.
What I had created was no longer there.
Instead, what stood, was a very small and raw human being,
with immense insecurities, failings and fears.

My first instinct was to defend myself, to fight.
Breath and love began leading me, first to see the illusion
I had created, then to act with integrity
even as I feel the pain.

And for me, most of all, because of my particular tests,
I had to acknowledge my knowing. Knowing is beyond
the human mind and emotional field. It has always told me
the truth. The truth can be painful beyond measure.

Mvto, knowing.

And mvto, or thank you, dawning. This morning is another day.
Each day has a soul, is a being, and loves to be acknowledged.
How beautiful you are in blue blue sky.


Joy Harjo......from her Blog site
Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Tout Est Possible

Tout Est Possible


Childrens’ hearts are open-
oblivious to country’s
appetite for hate.

.

Hate does not enter
the picture - no - it’s spoonfed;
is an acquired taste.

.

Friendship can exist-
where middle ground can be found
coming from all sides.

Janet Leigh January 2009

Four Mountain Wolves

Four Mountain Wolves



Chinle, late winter, 1973, when the wolves came

Gray mist wolf
from mountain frozen lake
traveling southwest
over deep snow crust singing
Ah ouoo
Ah ouoo
the fog hangs belly high
and the deer have all gone.
Ah ouoo
Ah ouoo
Gray mist wolf
following the edge of the Sun.
whirling snow wolf
spill the yellow-eyed wind
on blue lake stars
Orion
Saturn.

Swirling snow wolf
tear the heart from the silence
rip the tongue from the darkness
Shake the earth with your breathing
and explode gray ice dreams of eternity.

Mountain white mist wolf
frozen crystals on silver hair
icy whiskers
steaming silver mist from his mouth

Gray fog wolf
silent
swift and wet
howling along cliffs of midnight sky,
you have traveled the years
on your way to Black Mountain.
Call to the centuries as you pass

howling wolf wind
their fear is your triumph
they huddle in the distances weak.
Lean wolf running
where miles become faded in time.
the urge the desire is always with me
the dream of green eyes wolf
as she reached the swollen belly elk
softly
her pale lavender outline
startled into eternity.


Leslie Marmon Silko

Momaday Book Jackets

December 29, 1890

December 29, 1890


In the shine of photographs
are the slain, frozen and black

on a simple field of snow.
They image ceremony:

women and children dancing,
old men prancing, making fun.

In autumn there were songs, long
since muted in the blizzard.

In summer the wild buckwheat
shone like fox fur and quillwork,

and dusk guttered on the creek.
Now in serene attitudes


Navarro Scott Momaday

Wounded Knee

About the Wounded Knee Massacre


N. Scott Momaday

On December 15, 1890, the great Hunkpapa leader Sitting Bull, who had opposed Custer at the Little Bighorn and who had toured for a time with Buffalo Bill and the Wild West show, was killed on the Standing Rock reservation. In a dream he had foreseen his death at the hands of his own people.

Just two weeks later, on the morning of December 29, 1890, on Wounded Knee Creek near the Pine Ridge agency, the Seventh Cavalry of the U.S. Army opened fire on an encampment of Big Foot's band of Miniconjou Sioux. When the shooting ended, Big Foot and most of his people were dead or dying. It has been estimated that nearly 300 of the original 350 men, women, and children in the camp were slain. Twenty-five soldiers were killed and thirty-nine wounded,

Sitting Bull is reported to have said, "I am the last Indian." In some sense he was right. During his lifetime the world of the Plains Indians had changed forever. The old roving life of the buffalo hunters was over. A terrible disintegration and demoralization had set in. If the death of Sitting Bull marked the end of an age, Wounded Knee marked the end of a culture.

I did not know then how much was ended. When I look back now from the high hill of my old age, I can still see the butchered women and children lying heaped and scattered all along the crooked gulch as plain as when I saw them with eyes still young. And I can see that something else died there in the bloody mud, and was buried in the blizzard. A people's dream died there. It was a beautiful dream....

-Black Elk-

From Momaday, "The American West and the Burden of Belief" in Geoffrey C. Ward, The West: An Illustrated History. Copyright © 1996 by The West Book Project, Inc. (Little Brown, 1996).

Buteo Regalis

Buteo Regalis


His frailty discrete, the rodent turns, looks.
What sense first warns?
The winging is unheard,
unseen but as a distant motion made whole,
singular, slow, unbroken in its glide.
It veers, and veering, tilts broad-surfaced wings.
Aligned, the span bends to begin the dive
and falls, alternately white and russet,
angle and curve, gathering momentum.

N. Scott Momaday

Carriers of the Dream Wheel

Painting by Howard Terpning

Carriers of the Dream Wheel


This is the wheel of dreams
which is carried on their voices,
by means of which their voices turn
and center upon being.
It encircles the First World,
this powerful wheel.
They shape their songs upon the wheel
and spin the names of the earth and sky,
the aboriginal names.
They are old men, or men
who are old in their voices,
and they carry the wheel among the camps,
saying, "Come, come,
let us tell the old stories,
let us sing the savored songs.


N. Scott Momaday 1975

A Bear of a Man

N. Scott Momaday
By Daniel Gibson | Published 11/1/2003


N. Scott Momaday


He is large in all respects: in intellect, in accomplishment, in spirit, in the level of respect he engenders—and physically, as he says, “I am a bear.” In 1969, the realm of Native American literature and scholarly acknowledgment passed a major milestone when Kiowa author N. Scott Momaday was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his powerful, dark and moving first novel, House Made of Dawn. The prize acknowledged that written works by Native American authors had moved forever out of the category of anthropology and historical romance and taken their rightful place alongside the world’s other great literary traditions. And for a young Indian author, it would serve as springboard to a career of surprising grace, productivity and acclaim.


“The most important question one can ask is, ‘Who am I?’” explained Momaday in a recent interview in his new condominium in Santa Fe. “We sometimes spend our entire lives trying to find the answer to that. People tend to define you. As a child, you can’t help that, but as you grow older, the goal is to garner enough strength to insist on your own definition of yourself.” This is perhaps even more true for Native Americans, who have been inappropriately defined by non-Natives for centuries.

“One of the primary themes that run through my books is identity—people trying to understand who they are. Abel [the protagonist in House Made of Dawn] has lost his tribal identity and spends the rest of the book trying to regain that. Set, in The Ancient Child, is Indian, he knows that much, but he doesn’t understand what that means. He discovers it in the course of the novel. Of course, identity is an ancient theme in literature. And I too have searched.” In fact, Momaday not only searched, he hit pay dirt.


Born in 1934 in Lawton, Oklahoma, he was first raised by his grandmother amidst “dire poverty.” His parents, both teachers, eventually secured work at various Bureau of Indian Affairs schools, and Momaday spent his early years in Gallup and Shiprock, New Mexico, and in Tuba City, Chinle and San Carlos, Arizona. When he was 12, the family settled down in Jemez Springs, New Mexico, where his father worked as principal andhis mother as a teacher at the Jemez Pueblo Day School. Exposed to the then-prevalent use of Spanish among both the Pueblo people and Hispanic residents of the region; to the languages of his Kiowa relatives, as well as his Navajo, Apache and Pueblo classmates; and to English in the world at large, Momaday absorbed them like a parched earth embracing a gentle rain. And through these various influences, he found his own voice.


With both parents encouraging his pursuit of writing (his mother was a writer as well) and art (his father later illustrated Momaday’s favorite book, The Way to Rainy Mountain), young Momaday graduated from the University of New Mexico and then received a fellowship to attend Stanford University, where he eventually obtained a Ph.D. in literature. Then he set to work, producing novels, books of poetry, two plays and nonfiction works that brilliantly weave together Native oral storytelling traditions with complex poetry structures, journalistic observation, narrative and other forms and styles of telling a tale, as each story dictates. Along the way he also spent some 20 years teaching literature at Stanford (he still commutes once a week to Tucson, where he teaches at the University of Arizona), raised a family, secured a Guggenheim Fellowship, became a founding trustee of the National Museum of the American Indian, was accepted into the Kiowa Gourd Dance Society and launched a nonprofit youth foundation, The Buffalo Trust.


“I manage to keep fairly busy,” he says in a massive understatement. “Normally I’m doing four or five things at once. Sometimes I hop from one thing to another within a couple of days. Other times, I’ll stick with one project for several weeks. I find that this is a good way for me to work. When I’m writing, which is a very concentrated activity, I find it energizing to go to painting or other artwork for a while—it’s a different kind of creativity. One activity feeds the other, I think.

“Currently I’m writing a book that started out as a novel, but in the course of things I’ve turned it into something that is more autobiographical,” he continues. “I wrote a book called The Names, which is about my growing up, and what I’m writing now may turn out to be a sequel to that. And I’m teaching, of course. But I consider myself a poet, above all. I started out writing poetry and got sidetracked, but I’ve held onto my love of poetry. I have a number of poems on hand and I’m thinking of putting out a book of new and collected poems, with perhaps 100 or so. That’s another iron in the fire.”
In his rare “downtime,” Momaday says he loves to travel, “and I like walking. I like going to new places [often writing about these adventures for the New York Times]. I also love to cook and have people over—I like to have guests for dinner. My specialties are soups and stews, so we’re approaching my time now.”

Like a bear sitting down to the feast of a lifetime, eyeing last year’s growth—the spicy buds, hidden roots, and juicy berries ripened under the sun—N. Scott Momaday relishes his fare, consuming and giving voice to life’s seasons of bitter and sweet.


Daniel Gibson is editor of Native Peoples magazine and author of Pueblos of the Rio Grande: A Visitor’s Guide (Rio Nuevo).

If It Could Ascend

Painting by Howard Terpning

If It Could Ascend


I behold there
the far, faint motion of leaves.
The leaves shine,
and they will shiver down to death.
Something like a leaf lies here within me;
it wavers almost not at all,
and there is no light to see it by -
that it withers upon a black field.
If it could ascend the thousand years into my mouth,
I would make a word of it at last,
and I would speak it into the silence of the sun.

N. Scott Momaday
From the book In The Presence of the Sun © 1992.

Mogollon Morning

Painting by Howard Terpning


Mogollon Morning


The sun
From the sere south
Splays the ocotillo.
Cold withdraws.
Still I stand among
Black winds.

The long,
long bands of rock,
Old as wonder, stand back.
I listen for my death song there
In rock.

Old earth
In long shadows,
You pray my days to me.
I keep the ways of tortoises.
Keep me.

N. Scott Momaday
From the book In The Presence of the Sun © 1992.

Forms of the Earth at Abiquiu

Forms of the Earth at Abiquiu


I imagine the time of our meeting
There among the forms of the earth at Abiquiu,
And other times that followed from the one -
An easy conjugation of stories,
And late lunches of wine and cheese.
All around there were beautiful objects,
Clean and precise in their beauty, like bone.
Indeed, bone: a snake in the filaments of bone,
The skulls of cows and sheep;
And the many smooth stones in the window,
In the flat winter light, were beautiful.
I wanted to feel teh sun in the stones -
The ashen, far-flung winter sun.
And then, in those days, too,
I made you a gift of a small, brown stone,
And you described it with the tips of your fingers
And knew at once that it was beautiful -
At once, accordingly, you knew,
As you knew that forms of the earth at Abiquiu:
That time involves them and they bear away,
Beautiful, various, remote,
In failing light, and the coming of cold.

N. Scott Momaday
From the book In The Presence of the Sun © 1992.

Earth and I Gave You Turquoise

Earth & I Gave You Turquoise


Earth and I gave you turquoise
when you walked singing
We lived laughing in my house
and told old stories
You grew ill when the owl cried
We will meet on Black Mountain

I will bring corn for planting
and we will make fire
Children will come to your breast
You will heal my heart
I speak your name many times
The wild cane remembers you

My young brother's house is filled
I go there to sing
We have not spoken of you
but our songs are sad
When Moon Woman goes to you
I will follow her white way

Tonight they dance near Chinle
by the seven elms
There your loom whispered beauty
They will eat mutton
and drink coffee till morning
You and I will not be there

I saw a crow by Red Rock
standing on one leg
It was the black of your hair
The years are heavy
I will ride the swiftest horse
You will hear the drumming hooves.

N. Scott Momaday
From the book In The Presence of the Sun © 1992.

Mutation

Painting by Howard Terpning

Mutation


Here is mutation,
I listen and do not hear
the withering words,
language sifted in the leaves
becomes the long breath
of the elder, creeping bear,
whose breath is woven
among branches and dissolves
without processing
into the far rush of the rain.


N. Scott Momaday 2008

The Sun Horses

Painting by Ronnie Wood


The Sun Horses


The horses came
and he did not understand at first
that a destiny came with them.
They ranged along the ridge
dancing their shadows on the sun.
Some came for us when we sang
but others kept away on the horizon,
and we knew in our deepest reverence
that we were who we ought to be
as long as there were horses
appearing on the skyline.
Then one day
after we had got in their way,
the soldiers fired a thousand shots
and the sun blanket blanched
and the horses were no longer there.


Navarro Scott Momaday 2008

Simile

A SIMILE
N. Scott Momaday


What did we say to each other
that now we are as the deer
who walk in single file
with heads high
with ears forward
with eyes watchful
with hooves always placed on firm ground
in whose limbs there is latent flight

Carnegie, Oklahoma, 1919

Painting by Howard Terpning

Carnegie, Oklahoma, 1919


This afternoon is older
than the giving of gifts
and the rhythmic scraping of the red earth.
My father’s father’s name is called,
and the gift horse stutters out, whole,
the whole horizon in its eyes.
In the giveaway is beaded
the blood memories of fathers and sons.
Oh, there is nothing like this afternoon
in all the miles and years around,
and I am not here,
but, grandfather, father, I am here.


By N. Scott Momaday
From In the Presence of the Sun,

Plainview: I

Plainview: I


There in the hollow of the hills I see,
Eleven magpies stand away from me.

Low light upon the rim; a wind informs
This distance with a gathering of storms

And drifts in silver crescents on the grass,
Configurations that appear, and pass.

There falls a final shadow on the glare,
A stillness on the dark, erratic air.

I do not hear the longer wind that lows
Among the magpies. Silences disclose,

Until no rhythms of unrest remain,
Eleven magpies standing on the plain.

They are illusion—wind and rain revolve–
And they recede in darkness, and dissolve.


By N. Scott Momaday
From In the Presence of the Sun,

The Earth

The Earth


Once in his life a man ought to concentrate his mind upon
the remembered earth, I believe. He ought to give himself up
to a particular landscape in his experience,
to look at it from as many angles as he can,
to wonder about it,
to dwell upon it.

He ought to imagine that he touches it with his hands at
every season and listens to the sounds that are made upon
it. He ought to imagine the creatures there
and all the faintest motions of the wind. He ought to
recollect the glare of noon and all the colors of the dawn
and dusk. For we are held by more than the force of gravity
to the earth. It is the entity from which we are sprung,
and that into which we are dissolved in time.
The blood of the whole human race is invested in it.
We are moored there, rooted as surely, as
deeply as are the ancient redwoods and bristlecones.

Navarre Scott Momaday

Eagle Feather Fan

Eagle Feather Fan


The eagle is my power,
And my fan is an eagle.
It is strong and beautiful
In my hand. And it is real.
My fingers hold upon it
As if the beaded handle
Were the twist of bristlecone.
The bones of my hand are fine
And hollow; the fan bears them.
My hand veers in the thin air
Of the summits. All morning
It scuds on the cold currents;
All afternoon it circles
To the singing, to the drums.

Navarre Scott Momaday

Before an Old Painting of the Crucifixion

Before an Old Painting of the Crucifixion


I ponder how He died, despairing once.
I've heard the cry subside in vacant skies,
In clearings where no other was. Despair,
Which, in the vibrant wake of utterance,
Resides in desolate calm, preoccupies,
Though it is still. There is no solace there.

That calm inhabits wilderness, the sea,
And where no peace inheres but solitude;
Near death it most impends. It was for Him,
Absurd and public in His agony,
Inscrutably itself, nor misconstrued,
Nor metaphrased in art or pseudonym:

A vague contagion. Old, the mural fades...
Reminded of the fainter sea I scanned,
I recollect: How mute in constancy!
I could not leave the wall of palisades
Till cormorants returned my eyes on land.
The mural but implies eternity:

Not death, but silence after death is change.
Judean hills, the endless afternoon,
The farther groves and arbors seasonless
But fix the mind within the moment's range.
Where evening would obscure our sorrow soon,
There shines too much a sterile loveliness.

No imprecisions of commingled shade,
No shimmering deceptions of the sun,
Herein no semblances remark the cold
Unhindered swell of time, for time is stayed.
The Passion wanes into oblivion,
And time and timelessness confuse, I'm told.

These centuries removed from either fact
Have lain upon the critical expanse
And been of little consequence. The void
Is calendared in stone; the human act,
Outrageous, is in vain. The hours advance
Like flecks of foam borne landward and destroyed.

Navarre Scott Momaday

Angle of Geese

Painting by Greg Messier

Angle of Geese


How shall we adorn
Recognition with our speech?--
Now the dead firstborn
Will lag in the wake words teach.

Custom intervenes;
We are civil, something barks:
More than language means,
The mute presence mulls and marks.

Almost of a mind,
We take measure of as loss grows;
I am slow to find
The mere margin of repose.

And one November
It was longer in the use,
As if forever,
Of the huge ancestral goose.

So much symmetry!
Like the pale angle of time
And eternity.
The great shape labored to climb.

Quit of hope and hurt,
It held a motionless worry,
Wide of time, alert,
On the dark distant flurry.

Navarre Scott Momaday

The Delight Song of Tsoai-talee

Painting by Effrom Perea

The Delight Song of Tsoai-talee

by N. Scott Momaday


I am a feather on the bright sky
I am the blue horse that runs in the plain
I am the fish that rolls, shining, in the water
I am the shadow that follows a child
I am the evening light, the lustre of meadows
I am an eagle playing with the wind
I am a cluster of bright beads
I am the farthest star
I am the cold of dawn
I am the roaring of the rain
I am the glitter on the crust of the snow
I am the long track of the moon in a lake
I am a flame of four colors
I am a deer standing away in the dusk
I am a field of sumac and the pomme blanche
I am an angle of geese in the winter sky
I am the hunger of a young wolf
I am the whole dream of these things
You see, I am alive, I am alive
I stand in good relation to the earth
I stand in good relation to the gods
I stand in good relation to all that is beautiful
I stand in good relation to the daughter of Tsen-tainte
You see, I am alive, I am alive



N. Scott Momaday, “The Delight Song of Tsoai-talee” from In the Presence of the Sun: Stories and Poems, 1961-1991. Copyright ©1991 by N. Scott Momaday. Reprinted with the permission of the author and St. Martin’s Press, LLC.

Source: Twentieth-Century American Poetry (2004).

Spring Equinox

"spring equinox" by Peter Blue Cloud


Now day and night sit balanced.
From a silence that seemed forever,
the first booming crash of break-up
thunders from the river. Smiling,

an elder oils the handle of a hoe
and listens for the great, warm wind.

Creation is a song, a trickling become
a gurgling, chucling water voice.
Winds which bend the snows to melting
carry clouds of rain storms on shoulder.

Green islands appear on turtle's back
grasses long asleep beneath the snow.

Dawn of a glorious season, flowers
in merging, undulating waves of color
The taste of strawberries, anticipate
in their blossoms, the rich and fertile

smells of soil we bend to,
breaking the ground for summer's corn.

Peter Blue Cloud

Coyote, Coyote, Please Tell Me

Peter Blue Cloud is a Mohawk, born to the Turtle Clan in 1933, and raised on the reserve in Kahnawake, Quebec, where he lives today. He is the winner of the American Book Award, and is the author of numerous poetry collections, including Clans of Many Nations and Elderberry Flute Song: Contemporary Coyote Tales , from which the poem below is taken.

Growing up on the Kahnawake Reserve, Blue Cloud spoke only Mohawk at home; he was introduced to books in English by his grandfather. He began writing poems and songs as a teenager, and was first published in the journal Akwesasne Notes, where he became poetry editor in 1975. He has worked as an ironworker, logger, carpenter, and woodcutter. His poetry is noted for combining Native American myths with contemporary issues. "Blue Cloud's poems are living proof that the power and beauty of the Old Way cannot be lost," writes poet Gary Snyder. "Blue Cloud does nothing glamorous: he speaks from his own heart and life. He is a true poet, at home in all times, everywhere." He is especially known for his use of the Coyote figure in his stories and poems. The following is his poem

Coyote, Coyote Please Tell Me.


Coyote, Coyote, Please tell me
What is a shaman?

A shaman I don’t know
anything about.
I’m a doctor, myself.
When I use medicine,
it’s between me,
my patient,
and the Creation.

Coyote, Coyote, Please tell me
What is power?

It is said that power
is the ability to start
your chainsaw
with one pull.

Coyote, Coyote, Please tell me
What is magic?

Magic is the first taste
of ripe strawberries and
magic is a child dancing
in a summer’s rain.

Coyote, Coyote, Please tell me
Why is Creation?

Creation is because I
went to sleep last night
with a full stomach,
and when I woke up
this morning,
everything was here.

Coyote, Coyote, Please tell me
Who you belong to?

According to the latest
survey, there are certain
persons who, in poetic
or scholarly guise,
have claimed me like
a conqueror’s prize.

Let me just say
once and for all,
just to be done:
Coyote,
he belongs to none.


Peter Blue Cloud

Who Were You?

Who Were You?


by Luci Tapahonso


who were you that night
after all the beer you drank that long winter day
who were you?
angry at nothing and everyone
you drove too fast for the winding canal road
swerving to the very edge
where darkened weeds shivered in your rage
I followed you

my pleading a hardened ache
you took the night in shreds
white clouds of breath hung in between screams
the terror of a sudden billow of dust
not into the ditch
no
but the pickup spun and stopped crosswise
on the road
fading yellow light spilling out
dust and brakes causing dogs
to bark with a hoarse urgency
frozen mud glistening
crumbling as you stumbled
through cold, stinging bushes
and how did you fall
did you slip on a transparent beer bottle?
(They catch the sharp light of the moon
and at a certain angle, even the stars)
or did you slip on a rock
flat and round
slick with winter frost?
who were you that night?
who were you that night dying in angry drunkenness?
hard, winter stars
motionless in
the crisp dark night
the moon,
the white moon


From A Breeze Swept Through by Luci Tapahonso, West End Press.
© 1987 Luci Tapahonso

A Whispered Chant of Loneliness

A Whispered Chant of Loneliness


by Luci Tapahonso


I awaken at 1:20 then sit in the dark living room.
Numbers click time on silent machines.
Everyone sleeps.
Down the street, music hums, someone laughs,
It floats: an unseen breath through the window screen
My father uses a cane and each day
he walks outside to sit in the southern sunlight.
He reads the National Geographic, the Daily Times,
and the Gallup Independent.
He remembers all this and minute details of my life,
Sometimes he tells my children smiling.
His voice is an old rhythm of my childhood.
He reads us stories of Goldilocks and the Three Bears
and a pig named "Greased Lightning."
He held us close and sang throaty songs,
and danced Yei bicheii in the kitchen.

His voice is a steady presence in my mothering.
Some years ago, he handed me a cup of coffee
and told me that sometimes leaving a relationship
was an act of abiding strength.
He told me that my children would not be sad always.

Tonight I want to hear him speak to me.
He thinks I look like my mother did at 38.
Just last week, I heard her laughter in my own.

This winter, my life is a series of motions.
Each morning, I get up and shower,
have breakfast for my daughter,
drink a cup of coffee, then warm the car for five minutes.
I continue. My days: an undercurrent of fear,

an outpouring of love,
a whispered chant of loneliness.


From Sáanii Dahataa The Women Are Singing by Luci Tapahonso, University of Arizona Press.

Twinkle Shooter

Twinkle Shooters

Child, it wasn’t our fault we
were born the wild ones, with
twinkles shooting from us like
quills from porcupines (okay,
quill shooting’s a myth,) but I
swear one day we’ll fly to Cork
and find out who instigated
all this Irish jigging on frozen
harbors and lace bra flinging
into pines and naked maples.
Bet some little old guy leaning
on his cane with extra love in
his blue eye was responsible,
his missus of apple pies and
chicken stew no slouch herself.
So Child, some day when I am
long gone to the angels, when
you’re the light in any gloom,
the niblet of fun among sour
patch grapes, the one bursting
into song or bagpipe tunes for
no visible reason – shoot on,
sweet little twinkler, shoot on
and know that I’m twinkling too.


Jannie Funster January 2009

What Danger We Court

What Danger We Court

by Luci Tapahonso


For Marie

Sister, sister,
what danger we court
without even knowing it.
It's as simple as meeting a handsome man for lunch
at midnight.
Last Friday night
at the only stop sign for miles around,
your pickup was hit from behind.
That noise of shattering glass behind your head,
whirl of lights and metal as two cars hit your pickup -
that silent frenzy by tons of metal spinning you
echos the desert left voiceless.

Sister, sister,
what promises they must be for you
when you walk the edges of cliffs -
sheer drops like 400 feet -
vacuums of nothing we know here.
You turn and step out of the crushed car dazed
and walk to help small crying children from another car
and you come home, sister,

your breath intact,
heart pounding,
and the night is still the same.
Your children cry and cry to see you.
Walking and speaking gently.
your voice gathers them in.
what danger we court.
It is the thin border of a miracle, sister, that you live.
The desert surrounding your house is witness
to the danger we court and
sister, we have so much faith.


From Sáanii Dahataa The Women Are Singing by Luci Tapahonso, University of Arizona Press.
© 1993 Luci Tapahonso

They Are Together Now

They Are Together Now


by Luci Tapahonso


they were returning from Gallup late at night
singing with the radio and laughing
he was driving too fast
too fast
he missed the curve
the crash
the immediate silence
they whimpered as
the warm blood spread into the cold asphalt cracks
amidst the glass and tangled metal
their bodies writhed
moaning and crying until they rose above
they left then
watching in silence
oh
the soothing silence
the incredible serenity
they rose
leaving the steaming blood
ticking of metal settling down
the tinkle of glass slipping
the tin whine of a dying radio
they gather with others now
in the thin darkness
airy, light ghosts
sometimes they talk laughing
standing in little groups
waiting to befriend anyone
who might happen along
they are happy
on the flat plateau of that other world:
death
that quiet pleasure
they are all together now.


From A Breeze Swept Through by Luci Tapahonso, West End Press.
© 1987 Luci Tapahonso

They are Silent and Quick

They are Silent and Quick


by Luci Tapahonso


We sit outside on the deck
and below, tiny flickers of light appear here and there.
They are silent and quick.
The night is thick and the air is alive
with buzzing and humming insects.
"They're lightning bugs," Lori says. "Fireflies."
I wonder how I will get through another day.

"I think they are connected with magic," she says,
peering into the darkness.
"Maybe people around here tell stories
about small bits of magic that appear on summer nights."
"Yes," I say. "it must be."

I walk inside the house and phone my mother.
From far away, she says, "I never heard of such a thing.
There's nothing like that in Navajo stories."
She is speaking from hundreds of miles away
where the night is dark and the sky, a huge,
empty blackness. The long shadows of the mesas stretch
across the flat land.
"Someone is having a sing near here," she says. "We can hear
the drums all night long. Your father and I
are all alone here."
Her voice is the language of my dreams.
I hang up the phone and walk out into the moist air.

My daughter sits there in the darkness,
marveling at the little beings
filled with light, and I sit beside her.
I am hoping for a deep restful sleep.
In the woods below, teenagers are laughing
and the whine of the cicadas rises loudly.
"What is it?" she asks. "What's wrong?"
There are no English words to describe this feeling.
"T'áá 'iighisíí biniihaa shil hóyéé'," I say


Because of it, I am overshadowed by aching.
It is a heaviness that surrounds me completely.
"Áko ayóó shi"navl" hóyéé'." We are silent.
Early the next morning. I awaken from a heavy,
dreamless sleep and outside the window, a small flash
of light flickers off and on. Then I recall being taught
to go outside in the gray dawn before sunrise to receive
the blessings of the gentle spirits who gathered around
our home. Go out, we were told, get your blessings
for the day.

And now, as I watch these tiny bodies of light,
the aching inside lessens as I see how
the magic of these lights precedes the gray dawn.


From Sáanii Dahataa The Women Are Singing by Luci Tapahonso, University of Arizona Press.
© 1993 Luci Tapahonso

These Long Drives

These Long Drives


by Luci Tapahonso


between Cuba or Grants
fall short of the usual comfort.
My younger brother, shisíli,
made a beaded ring for me --
yellow daisies with black centers.
He was a rough-and-tumble third grader
and I was in high school: intent on being
the best western stomp dancer,


and maybe snagging a tall Chinle cowboy.
Years later, his interest in mechanical objects
kept my car running well. On trips home from various cities,
he filled the tank, rotated the tires, and changed the oil
as easily as I changed boots. After each visit, I left assured
my car would run another 5,000 miles or so. At any hint
of car trouble, I rushed home to my younger brother
while my car could still make it.

This brother died at 22. One day he was
driving his trusty old pickup, laughing
and joking, then he turned silent,
a thin figure beneath hospital sheets.
His slow death entered my blood.
I breathe it with every step.
The middle brother is a few years older than I.
He is a father, master mechanic, and stern uncle.
Once when I was at his home, his little son came inside
and whispered into his shoulder,
"Daddy, the rabbit won't talk."
My brother laughed and hugged his son.
"The Volkswagen won't start," he told us.
He held his son a while, then they walked over
to fix the stalled car.

His sons will grow up to be good cooks and fine mechanics.
They will care and abide by the wishes of the women
in their lives as my brother does.

Sometimes he curses the long desert miles between us
when he senses I may be in danger. This city protects
crazed men who are freer than I. My brother finds ways
to console my anguish and fear over distances of telephone
wire and urgent visits to medicine men. His steady voice
calms me on dark evenings.

My oldest brother: such vivid images I have of him.
He Tarzan-like and I a skinny,
dark child swinging on his arms.
He was tall and girls giggled around him. We wondered why
they called him and then turned silly at his approach.
He was killed by a preacher's son, and at 13 years old
I was stunned to find the world didn't value
strong, older brothers and that preaching
the gospel life could be nothing.
I am remembering my brothers tonight
and during a strange spring snowstorm, my mother calls
and tells me about some little thing she remembered
from years ago. Laughing into the phone, I see outside
the wonderful snow,

seemingly endless, warm and cold at once.
No one could have predicted this storm.
It is all strange, beautiful, and we will talk of this
for years to come. This storm, and I will think of how
how I missed my brothers just then.


From Sáanii Dahataa The Women Are Singing by Luci Tapahonso, University of Arizona Press.
© 1993 Luci Tapahonso

She Sits On the Bridge

She Sits on the Bridge


by Luci Tapahonso



When Nelson was still running around and drinking years
ago, he was coming home from Gallup
hitch-hiking late at night
and right by Sheepsprings Trading Post-
you know where the turn to Crystal is?
Well, he was walking near there
when he heard a woman laughing somewhere nearby
It was dark there
(there were no lights at the trading post then)
he couldn't see anyone but he stopped and yelled out
Where are you? What happened to you?
but she kept laughing louder and louder
and then she started to cry in a kind of scream.
Well, Nelson got scared and started running
then right behind him - he could hear her running too.
She was still crying and then he stopped
she stopped also
She kept crying and laughing really loud
coming behind him and she caught up with him.
He knew even if he couldn't see her.
She was gasping and crying
right close to him - trying to catch her breath.
He started running again faster and off to the side
he saw some lights in the houses against the hill
and he ran off the road towards them
then she stopped and stayed on the highway
still laughing and crying very loudly.
When Nelson got to the houses
he heard people laughing and talking
they were playing winter shoe games inside there.
But a little ways away was a hogan with a light inside
he went there and knocked
Come in
a voice said
An old man (somebody's grandpa) was there alone
and upon seeing him said
Come in!
What happened to you?
and started to heat up some coffee.
Nelson told the old grandpa about
the woman crying on the road.
You don't know about her? he asked.
She sits on the bridge sometimes late at night.
The wind blows through her long hair.
We see her sitting in the moonlight or
walking real slow pretending to be going to Shiprock.
We people who live here know her and
she doesn't bother us.
Sometimes young men driving by pick her up -
thinking she wants a ride and after riding a ways
with them - she disappears right in front of them.
She can't go too far away, I guess.
That's what he told Nelson
Stirring his coffee.
Nelson stayed there in the hogan that night
and the old grandpa kept the fire going until morning.


From Earth Power Coming edited by Simon J. Ortiz, Navajo Community College Press.
© 1983 Luci Tapahonso

Remember the Things They Told Us

Sháá Áko Dahjiníleh
Remember the Things They Told Us


by Luci Tapahonso


1
Before this world existed, the holy people made themselves
visible by becoming clouds, sun, moon, trees, bodies of water,
thunder rain, snow, and other aspects of this world we live in.
That way, they said, we would never be alone. So it is possible
to talk to them and pray, no matter where we are and how we feel.
Biyázhí daniidlí, we are their little ones.

2
Since the beginning, the people have gone outdoors at dawn
to pray, The morning light, adinídíín, represents knowledge
and mental awareness. With the dawn come the holy ones
who bring blessings and daily gifts, because they are grateful
when we remember them.

3
When you were born and took your first breath, different
colors and different kinds of wind entered through your
fingertips and the whorl on top of your head. Within us,
as we breathe, are the light breezes that cool a summer
afternoon, within us the tumbling winds that precede rain,
within us sheets of hard-thundering rain,
within us dust-filled layers of wind that sweep in
from the mountains,
within us gentle night flutters that lull us to sleep.
To see this, blow on your hand now.
Each sound we make evokes the power of these winds
and we are, at once, gentle and powerful.

4
Think about good things when preparing meals. It is
much more than physical nourishment. The way the cook
or cooks) think and feel become a part of the meal.
Food that is prepared with careful thought, contentment,
and good memories tastes so good and nurtures the mind
and spirit, as well as the body. Once my mother chased me
out of the kitchen because it is disheartening to think
of eating something cooked by an angry person.

5
Be careful not to let your children sit or play on tables
or countertops Not only is it bad manners, but they might
have to get married far sooner than you would ever want.

6
Don't cut your own hair or anyone else's after dark. There
are things that come with the darkness that we have no control
over. It's not clear why this rule exists, but so far no one
is willing to become the example of what happens to someone
who doesn't abide by it.


From Sáanii Dahataa The Women Are Singing by Luci Tapahonso, University of Arizona Press.
© 1993 Luci Tapahonso

A Rough Life

A Rough Life


by Luci Tapahonso


She was from Dulce.
Thick, black hair -- Apache.
Her voice was loud
a blunt edge to it.
She was crying softly when I first saw her,
clutching kleenex balls in each fist.
Her head bent low over the front of
the thin cotton hospital gown
pulled tight across her lap.

Later we talked:
My legs are cold, she said, rubbing her calves hard.
They're always cold.
Her eyes were sharp, dark and sort of squinting at me.

I felt guilty in my nylon nightgown
because I expected to be in this place at this time
but she woke up here from a 5-month drunk

She told me:
One time I was hit with a tire iron,
right here on the head.
I was changing a tire and somehow it hit me hard.
It was a big gash -- just bleeding on my face.
All I had was a bottle of beer -- those big ones,
you know. So I just poured it all on my head
and tied it and it was snowing then so I stayed inside
the house for about three or four days, out of the cold.
It healed up okay.
She rubbed her head remembering.

You're a tough woman. I told her.
That's what's meant by life is rough.
You're a Navajo. (I nodded silently.)
They're ok, she said looking out the window,
It's those Utes that we don't like.
They're no good, you know and
They don't like us Apaches, too.
I don't know why but I was married to one a long time ago.
He was no good, just used to get drunk and talk too much.
He left one time -- I didn't look for him or nothing.
I was glad to get rid of him easy. He didn't come back.
About a year later, I was drinking at Towaoc
with his cousin and she told me
someone killed him two weeks before.
But I didn't care 'cause he talked too much
and died from it. Besides he was a Ute.
She said smoothing her hair.

I said again to her:
Yep, that's a rough life there.

We nodded in agreement.


From Seasonal Woman by Luci Tapahonso, Tooth of Time Books.
© 1982 Luci Tapahonso