EQUINOX

When her grandfather  
was chief elder,  
and blessed his granddaughter,  
held high in offering,    
spirit voices  
of the seven caves      
could still be heard  
echoing  
through the canyon.  
 
Beyond desert yucca stalks,  
from pine pitch torches,  
moon besets  
Scorpio's firebrands  
o'er the priestess,  
who's onyx eyes blaze,  
of what she will consume  
and may destroy,  
Yellow Woman & Black Panther.  
   
Elder sibling to the Jaguar,  
only she remains  
from the heresy of its wisdom  
on this night of the equinox,  
when waters of Pueblo Mesa  
spring forth, to flow  
and part the cliffs,  
to reclaim, to scatter  
rattlers from their mounds.  
   
With memories intact,  
of those now gone,  
on ghost winds of sky riders  
generations before,  
and the updrafts that carry  
kachina prayers & offerings  
on their breath  
amid sweet cedar smoke  
of mesquite sap
and rendered fat.  
   
Her bronze hands filled
with indigo berries of woodbine,  
touching the four corners,  
the green pain of flint & flesh,  
of Red Clay Daughter
and Black Earth Mother,  
invoking peyote spells
among the ruins  
and the silent Joshua.