This morning a red cactus wren greeted me as if to say, “Follow me.”
So into Arizona we did go where this state bird flies so free and low,
This is the land of the Navajo.
Hopi Indians live here, too, ready to sell their wares to me and you.
The billboards advertise handmade crafts that we can take at a discount rate.
Dolls, rugs, and jewelry, too, there are also moccasins for me and you.
No red rocks seen here today, but there are many that are brown and gray.
Some are smooth and some are not, some are sitting on the top
Of dirt hills made from hot, dry times,
When rain falls here, it must sound like chimes.
The creeks are dry, the rivers dead,
Many western travelers surely did dread,
This no man’s land of dust and sand,
Of miles and miles of landscapes bland,
Where Native Americans lived in bands
Of tribes who battled for their home-land.
Long before the buffalo roamed, dinosaurs owned these hills of stone,
Plastic imitations along the roads invite us to see some old bones
Of fossils that tell us a story about this land long before man called it home.
The Navajo, the Cherokee, the Kickapoo,
The Chickasaw and the Choctaw, too,
The Cheyenne and the Shawnee, the Arapaho and the Apache,
All were here long before white man came ashore
On this land claimed to be home of the brave and the free.
The color of rose pervades this land,
Does it represent blood lost at the hands
Of white men who crossed this way and then decided that they would stay
Without thinking of another way to share this terrain first inhabited by the Native Americans?
Mother Nature has been painting here using hues of browns, and reds, and blues,
Making this desert sand look like rainbows across the land.
To the Painted Desert I now go, ready to take some photos
Of rainbows of sand and other art made by the beating of Mother Nature’s heart.
We just made it through the gate, but not too late to see a few things or two.
Petrified wood has turned into stone where antelopes still roam
And the setting sun shone bright on layers of sandstone.
