Storyteller Read online

  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.