Lamar Street Bridge, Austin, Texas, Monday, 16 July 2012

excerpt from 'Navajo Land'
by Joan Swift
(formatting not true to original)
Southern Poetry Review
Spring 1990

... I see how we make what we need -
silver, turquoise and jade,
jewelry on velvet black as a wild night sky
above the mesa.

A raven floats over.
"Nothing around here," says the Indian boy,
"but rattlers and jackrabbits."

And the ageless glyphs of the Anasazi:
sun, quail, spider,
scorpion, turtle, deer...

What they say is clear:
We loved the land, but had to leave.