Eastern Sun

 Eastern Sun

The mud-red,

Rutted road ends

Without ceremony,

At a Baptist church, of

All things, high, flat above

The canyon, where a century

Behind us, in a dark past, a group

Of dirty men cornered ancient families

Within the walls, killed some, but failed to see all.

We have come to ride the small,

Navajo ponies down the canyon walls.

I stand on this alien ground, still fascinated

By the rocks at my feet, the clean smell of

Sage, and other evergreens I have never seen.

The ponies sprawl like dogs in the sun around the

Sheet-metal barn. They smell like no horses I have

Ever touched. They fight like wild things, the dusty stallions

Among them screaming and blowing cold from their muzzles. I

Pull one’s leg through a knotted rope he has coiled around himself,

And pat the base of his neck and speak softly to him. He is a mottled gray

And white, wiry and long-muscled, and his eyes shine with something like

The feeling of running power. He is the one chosen for me to ride, and the small

Navajo man shows me curving water brand on his hip, and tells me that all of these small

Horses come from the ones left by Kit Carson. He says that name with all the hatred in the world.

As we cross the bright sage fields, other horses come up from the water to watch as we turn

To the narrow decline that swings back and forth. We pass a brass marker in the stones,

Drawings on the walls, reference to sun, moon, water, some with no apparent link

To the world slowly expanding around me. To any world I have ever seen.

I am small in the canyon, and as I follow my wife on her small bay,

We come to a hogan. Beside it, a small red firetruck, unfaded.

Terrel says this was his home, and beyond it, a tall rock

Pointed to the sun. It is Spider Rock, he tells me,

The place where bad children were taken

And eaten, and their white bones litter

The narrow top. “But I always did

Whatever I wanted,” he says,

"Nothing on earth scares me."

On the canyon floor,

The horses nuzzle

At three points,

Breathing,

Seeing,

All.

Ascending –

Dreaming, seeing-

I feel the air losing its life,

As the evergreens slowly give

Up their breath, far below, thinning

Through the afternoon canyon, still

Alien to me. My pony pulls and blows

With great effort as his tough, unshod feet

Echo with hollow dullness on ancient stones,

Femurs, over sheep skulls. I allow him total control,

For I have no idea where to go. I pat the base of his neck

Once again, as if he needs something from me to go on. He is

All things now, and if he were to step wrong, we would both plummet

Equally, silently, finally into the cooling shade of the ancient

Walls. The past flows through me in flashes. I do not

Understand any of it. I stop trying. Blindness takes

Me, holds me. I do not want to see what these

Walls have seen. What the generations of

These ponies have seen. I feel it deeper

Than seeing. Becoming all things,

Losing all. Breathing, pulsing

Changing nothing. Flowing,

In the swirling madness

Of all time, or absent

From it. Dust in my

Lungs, the blood-

Life holding on.

Surrounding,

Screaming,

Silent.