Without me, she said. Go—
I’m going to the rock
that once had wings. My life
rolls like rock clods
down a volcanic throat, circling
the tips of big winds beneath
~
poised arms wing bone, surrounded
and closing, dust hinge. In upstroke, a slow
separate in landing then takeoff. To take
air, those inward whooshes as if blessing
oneself: marrow leaving the hollow
~
pop. She knelt with women
filling the earth: mush in tin
after tin, filled in with breaking
sun. Kneeling down, she’d flap
dough with the wood pop,
her hands whirring. The air
bubbles rising with heat ready to—
Later she’d send me to 7-2-11
clenching quarters for—
~
at two points: they say a man flew
with a life-feather, quill in hand,
from the top of Shiprock down
to the people, having slain
monster birds. Plumes
and all their vanes ending
in flight after bird strike
~
“A female eagle swooped east,”
she once told me. “It was like gold
whirring in the blue of my windshield.
I was in my truck, driving
and listening to Peyote songs
when it happened. I had never seen
so much dust.”
~
When skin slats, layered
like stone then collapses—
a red grows gray. Aspen expands
to the hush
of this cedar-filled room. When
her neck grew heavy she said,
“The music helps me; press play”:
Hei hei ya wena hei nei, Hei hei ya wena hei nei;
Hei hei ya wena hei nei, nei; Hei hei ya wena hei nei;
Ya na hei ya na hei o weno hei nei;
Ya na hei ya na hei o weno hwoi na hei nei yo wei.