WEBVTT

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This poem I'll read is called
"The Stone Shaped by Song,"

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and it honors all the women that
brought us here today that would

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have to grind corn.

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And we had our own grinding
songs and our clans.

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And all our clans
were brought here.

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And those songs are
in the wind now.

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Some are still
being sung, but this

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gives tribute to the
actual grinding stone that

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are still here with us today.

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"The Stone Shaped by Song."

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"Only once, at dawn, I
unearthed a grinding stone,

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beneath a dirt floor at the
old horse corral, she sang

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ya ah-nah clan songs when
there were those songs

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in the field, now barren and
bursting with tumbleweeds,

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the land parched as potted
polenta or peeled paint.

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Her skin, black lava.

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Her hair, shelled white corn.

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Her body curved like
a half-moon crescent.

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Her face

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rounded smooth had thin
from wear like sand

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the oceans washed ashore in
the rise and fall of tide,

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on Hawaiian black beach,
the flavor of Salt Woman,

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red seaweed and slender
green, sheet-drunee yaka

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heirloom corn seed, planted
on a warm autumn day,

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sprouts then fades as songs
wither into stillness or bushes

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of sumac berries in the
abandoned field, red fruit

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the deer

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devour, tart and tangy
as hibiscus lemon tea.

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A mist arises when the stone
recalls the clan women's voices.

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Singing her songs, she remembers
the rhythmic milling sound

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of mano and metate.

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She craves, cornmeal
and ground wheat.

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She cherishes the
last song sung to her.

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She hums forgotten

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tunes.

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I lift her up and say
"come home with me,

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rest in Cusco's garden.

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Sing with me."

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Dáwaeh, [haupa?].

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Thank you.

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[CHEERING, APPLAUSE]

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