So I think I'm going to go ahead and share
a couple of new things.
I told Larry when we started talking
about this topic of this seminar--
a little bit later, though, I told him
that I had already been working on some pieces that
actually had to do with water.
So it was fortuitous that we ended up dealing
with this topic this semester.
So I was certainly motivated to finish some of the pieces
that I had started a while back because of this class.
And this one's called "Blessings for Water."
In class today we were talking about--
one of the students asked about some of my poems
where he thought that they seemed
like they were teaching you something, or informing
you something.
And I told them, there are some pieces
that I tended to think about that way to share information,
that perhaps others will gain something from it,
say, about O'odham history or O'odham practices.
Nothing too deep, but light things.
And I mentioned in class about the idea of going to the ocean
and when you go to the ocean, you always greet the ocean
before you do anything else.
And a lot of young O'odham, when they read that, they ask,
is that true?
And we say, yes, or, ask your grandma, and they say,
yeah, it is true.
And so they will pick up that practice
and do it the next time they go to SeaWorld.
They go they go greet the ocean before they go there
you know Disneyland or whatever entertainment
they went to California for.
But anyway, so that's why this piece is
called "Blessings for Water."
And so again, it's a little bit of a list, at least for me.
"I've touched the water of the White River of eastern Arizona.
I've put my foot in the slow currents of the San Pedro
in Patagonia, Arizona.
I've felt the icy flow of the Merced River in Yosemite.
I've ridden the waves of the Colorado
and rested on its flows.
I've seen the Rio Grande run rapids in the North and meander
through the flat of southern New Mexico,
where whooping cranes rest on their way home.
I've lived in a place called Red River, where there is no Red
River, but named for a movie.
I've lived near the Rillito River, a river named twice,
a river that can flow with the best during rainy winters
and rich summer monsoons.
The Rillito, dry riverbed most of the year,
harboring the homeless and those alone.
As for larger bodies of water, we must pray at their feet
and give gifts.
I've done so, and record them here as documentation.
I have offered blessings at the Pacific Ocean,
in San Diego, Los Angeles, La Jolla, Venice,
and Ventura Beach, always surrounded
by vacationers and dogs running along the sand as witnesses.
I've offered prayer at a dry, hot desert
beach in the Gulf of Mexico, with only Mexican fishermen
caring for nets as my alibi.
I've humbled myself at the black beaches of Hilo,
and another time at Waikiki, oblivious to bronzed bodies
and surfers.
I've offered blessings only once at the Atlantic Ocean,
at Martha's Vineyard, with the woman who
shook her language from sleep."