Kachina Patriarch

I once walked atop a butte

Each footstep greeted by a cloud of red dust,

The scent of desert sage

The pain of us lost in relief—

Canyon de Chelly in the near distance

Arches another day

Soon Mesa Verde—

A promise to our shared forgetting:

My travelogue and a sandpainting of a medicine man

Dancing on one foot, rattle in hand

I believed through amnesia

I would transcend that ancient wound

Naked to the elements

Nowhere to hide the edges of me

I trusted time to carve me into something less brittle

Long after you left this fractured rock

I dreamed of you

Alone in a silo—

A large tin can with sides shiny and hot

The top a lattice of rusting iron

You seated at the center

Water pooling above your knees

The medicine men of the Dagara tribe

Claimed the dead need mourners

To shed tears enough

To make the river of grief flow,

Carrying the departed to the Spirit World

You waited for the medicine

You never gave

Still, I could not leave you there

I continued the journey

Beyond the Indians of the Southwest

Further than the Dagara of Burkina Faso

Until I found Shinto atop a mountain in Japan

Surrounded by shark-filled waters

There were other seekers

Who had also heard of Rabbit

Who deceived Shark into safe passage

This trickster spirit

Filled with potential

Graced with forgiveness

I knew you were Shark—

Your secrets safe from detection

But your life hidden from view

Nothing ever came to trick you

Except the end

I carry you now

Each day with a prayer:

Reach the heart of Kami

Grow your medicine pouch

With ointments of purity

Tinctures of happiness

One day we will greet again:

This time where the river meets the ocean

And the patriarch flows home to love.