"A Tree Grows Near the Road."
"A tree grows near the road.
The branches curve above the tracks
of trucks and Jeeps used to run tourists
in and out of the Canyon.
Half-day, all-day tours.
Cameras click.
Coconut sunscreen with SPF 30 scents the air.
Someone shutters in that tree that
reaches across the dirt trail.
It is a woman driven from her home,
her husband and children scorched,
along with the corn and the peach orchards,
the sheep slaughtered.
Below, the horse soldier paces back and forth, back and forth.
She sees horse prints in the sand, burying hers.
Brown Diné women sell sodas and turquoise jewelry near
the grove of cottonwoods at Antelope House.
Tourists must love the authenticity of real Indians.
This canyon, elegant, sexy, ancient,
and all at once dangerous, demands the price of memory
and the stories of jiní.
So remember this place, where the tree arches over the road,
represents the flow of the water,
and the woman who got away.
It is the road that runs through us like ancestor blood."