Aztec and Other Real People

                   Starlight

Desert stars are butterflies
of smooth obsidian.
Their twinkling glance
a reflection of the moon
On fluttering wings of shining stone,
hovering, just beyond man's reach.

                   The Stonecutter

His long fingers touched,
divined natural fissures--delicate striations
in the face of the limestone.
Hammered wooden wedges in the minute cracks.
Kept them wet with splashes
a day and a day and a day.
Until the quarry face rent and split apart
In cubic chunks, flat square sheets.
He pressed with adzes, cut and carved,
polished with obsidian
the malmy newborn stone.
Subdued the waxy, workable surface
before the wind enfolded cured,
made it strong.
Imperishable as granite.


                New Fires

In the turning of the fifty-second year,
yellow blossoms
fill the sir with fragrance.
High on the near mountain,
we watch with night eyes,
we pray,
for stars to climb above midnight clouds.
Pale cluster, six, or is it seven?
Followed by the bright red star.
Slowly,
not veering from their course,
not breaking asunder.
Right in place, right on time,
undimmed and new again,
after all the sheaves of years.


                   The Rememberer

I was but small when my father took me there
astride his great shoulders.
Through the forest of
dappled moonlight and moonshade.
Beside the pyramid,
among the people gathered.
the Rememberer sat inside a circle of smoky light.
The moon had finished her monthly meal of stars,
was full fed, gorged to her roundest and brightest.
The man's voice was old,
his telling covered years of greatness, death and mystery.
He know of wondrous things of the sea,
things of the night.
Gods and owls and great green moths,
night flying herons.
In the time of full dark,
I slept, ensorcelled, in my father's arms.

                   
                   Lakota

Golden men on horseback swept northward,
searching,
their gift to the People lifted them to
masters of the plains.
The dreams of young men left the earth.
Soared above the clouds.
Mounted
They became companion of the eagle.


                   Song Dogs

Old man coyote has many whims,
he means no harm.
Its strange to be alive.

Old man coyote sits up there at night
thinking how he created it all.
Blood in the sky, the sun is gone.

Old man coyote, grinning and beckoning.
as the song dogs run,
their trembling music clear and ringing under the stars.
The world will change and change again,
under the song dog's feet.