From within this room
I can hear the longings of
men and women who laid these stones in
1100.
As Christians in Europe
fought their fights.
The Pueblo people, they loved this land.
They loved the volcanic ash which had so recently
fallen and made the land black, fertile and
sometimes moist.
Disasters have their benefits.
Echoes ring on stone walls as children play
with straw dolls made of corn husk.
girls grind their mother’s corn.
They wonder if the boy they love
loves them back. Or the girl. Or both.
Men gather underground to plan
community life and wonder
at the gods and their whims.
And play games.
This 100 room dwelling
stone on stone laid by the
hands of the Sinagua Pueblo people
heard babies cry and women sigh
and men rest from a hunt
as women and men rubbed their legs
with scented oils.
They too looked out this window
to the sky and wondered
how this life could be.
How horrible and how wonderful
and how dry and how moist
at times.
A dog barks as a mother sets
the clay pot into the coals
for a meal of rabbit and corn
to roast all day.
She will die
and these stones will echo less
but not today.
Not today.
Not yet.
Sky and light and some laughter
is enough for this desert
to be a home
until the light begins to come from
screens and humans wither.
And humans separate their dwellings.
And they write books. And misunderstand.
Sitting here, staring out this window
I wish I had lived then
that way
with the light and the land and the love
of a community of families and
a family of communities
who were content with corn, light;
the scent of a loved one longed for
and a straw doll.
And the night song of a coyote.
And the silence of a potter
massaging the clay with a stone
as the smell of the corn and rabbit
make it all enough.
