"Four Poems for a Child Son."
Raho is his name.
December 18th, 1972.
[SPEAKING ACOMA]
What's your Indian name?
It has to do with full moments of mountains, deserts, sun,
gods, song, completeness.
It has to do with stories, legends full of heroes,
and traveling.
It has to do with rebirth and growing
and being strong and seeing.
You see, [SPEAKING ACOMA] it's like this, the movement,
the [SPEAKING ACOMA].
Go to the water and gather the straight willow stems.
Bring them home.
Work carefully at forming them.
Tie on the feathers.
Paint them with the Earth.
Feed them and pray with them.
Pray.
You see, son, [SPEAKING ACOMA], the eagle
is a whole person, the way it lives.
It means it has to do with paying attention
to where it is, not the center of the Earth especially,
but part of it, one part among all parts.
And that's only the beginning.
It was the third day, July 12th, 1971.
Hitchhiking on the way to Colorado, I heard your voice.
Look, dad, a hawk sweeping its wings
clear through the whole sky, the blue,
the slow wind fresh with the smell
of summer alfalfa at the foot of the Jemez Mountains.
You see, the gods, the gods come during the summer,
for four days among the people, Bringing gifts,
bringing hope and life.
You can see them, I mean.
Waiting for my next ride, I sang.
Look, the plants with bells.
Look, the stones with voices.
Yesterday, in the late afternoon,
there was suddenly a noise of birds filling up everything.
This morning in the newspaper, I read about starlings
at the Air Force base.
I guess there were.
But all I knew yesterday was that they filled up
the trees, the utility wires, the sky, the world.
That's all I know.
What my uncle, Tony, Hawiya, told my sister and me.