Recently, the Papago Indians have
started making little figurines out of straw and bits of cloth
that they might have around the house.
Historically, I don't think there's any precedent for that
in their culture.
It's simply something they make to sell to tourists.
And they're really rather interesting things.
And I bought one at Kitt Peak which is the best
place to buy these things.
Because, well, I don't want to give you business advice.
But at any rate, it was a little--
and it's mounted on a platform of cholla
and there's two figures.
And one guy is digging for water,
an old man in the desert.
He's digging a hole, trying to find water.
And his wife is sitting down beside him,
just sort of with a very sour expression on her face,
waiting for him to find water.
And the person who made it-- her name is [? Jeka ?]
[? Frenkel-- ?] had written around the water hole with
pencil in rather shaky letters "no water"
to be sure you got the idea.
But I-- although it's a charming little vignette--
like most things charming-- they also have this serious side.
So I took this little--
these figures seriously.
"We must show the man and woman at a dry waterhole.
He is digging with a stick tied to his arm with black wool
while she sits legs out beside her empty cup, a lump of wood.
Their bag of gifts and food stuffs, a poor balloon,
is dropped on the ground.
Perhaps they're traveling between one
relative and another, between a son and the next crop of corn,
blue in the future.
Are they sick?
Are they old?
At any rate, it is out beyond the farms
where the mountains crawl along the edges
of a brittle universe.
And they, in the middle, sweating in their dainty
flowered grain sack clothes, carved from saguaro ribs,
leaner, sadder than normal.
One's stooping, stirring, drop-jawed over the hole
through the cholla base where there is sea sand at the bottom
if one looks.
The other-- awkward, waiting in a shift
of birds and red grapes, cross-eyed, angry,
wanting water."