This is the first poem in "A Radiant Curve".
It's called "The Warp is Even".
"The warp is even, taut vertical loops
between our father and the earth.
Today I begin anew, in the gray pre-dawn the air is moist.
As I walk, my footsteps echo in the still morning,
damp, fragrant circles appeared overnight on the cold driveway.
Soon they will vanish with the sun's first rays,
but now I breathe the sweet dampness.
Suddenly I miss my father so, how he savored such mornings.
He would have spoken to the solitary dove that
sits on the edge of the red tile roof.
Its long, delicate coos are the rhythmic pauses
of desert mornings.
Today I began anew.
This afternoon, after phone calls and class preparations,
I sit in the bright sunlight, and twist,
then loop the dark edging cords along the top
and bottom of the loom.
My fingers move easily between the turns of yarn,
such needed slants of rain.
"It hasn't rained here for months," I tell my loom.
On a clear, quiet afternoon last spring, my mother
said, "It's hard to see now, my eyes are getting weak."
It seemed that she had been thinking of this for some time.
Today, the tightly spun dark red yarn
falls into place evenly, as I began anew for my mother,
and some things she remembers as she looks
at rugs, the long afternoons decades ago when
the children slept, the soft tamping of her batten
comb echoed in the small house.
The intricate double-sided rugs her mother-in-law wove.
Even now, 70 years later, she marvels at the saddle rug
Nihinálí ' Ásdząąn made for her husband, my father.
I began anew with my mother's memories.
Today, I began anew.
On the mantle is a small basketball
my grandson left when he last visited.
I look down the bright hallway and recall his bubbling baby
laughter.
His dark shiny eyes glitter with delight.
I easily recall the warm tautness
of his little body in my arms.
His black thick hair against the bend of my elbow.
He lets me carry him as if he were an infant.
I sing old songs, and he watches me.
[SINGING IN NAVAJO]
He watches the huge blue sky overhead.
I sing songs created just for him, "Whose little boy are you?
Whose little boy are you?
Said I am grandma's boy.
Grandma's little baby boy.
Baby boy, baby boy, grandma's little baby boy."
As he listens intently to the songs
and watches the skies of his homeland,
I memorize everything.
I wish for such moments every day.
I weave the first four rows of black yarn for my little
grandson, who inherited my father's name,
Hastiin Tsétah Naaki Bísóí.
The warp is even, taut vertical loops between our father
and the earth.