Driving Towards The Sunset - Dennis Wayne Bressack (best detective novels of all time TXT) 📗

mountains,
gaze at wide-open prairies,
touch spirits asleep within.

The sun reflects red cliffs,
this tribe calls their ancestral home.
Kivas co-exist with casinos
open 24 hours a day,
so white man can play, re-pay and re-pay...

Every building’s built adobe style in Santa Fe,
the result of genocidal history.
I don’t pretend to comprehend, to know
why Indian killer Carson’s a hero,
not Indian warrior, Geronimo.
February 28, 2001-Santa Fe, New Mexico

9) Broken Promises

In New Mexico every mountain view
foreign, yet familiar, overwhelms me.
On every endless turn in the horizon,
the clouds pirouette on deep red table tops,
run on the ground, imitating whirling smoke.

The shadow of shingles in layers
a black curtain, creeping slowly,
closing across the face
of the sun-reflected sienna glow,
into the petrified forest of broken promises.

March 3, 2001-Santa Fe, New Mexico

10) The Bear and the Butterfly

Smoke hugs the San Francisco Peaks.
Clouds stick to the mountaintop like Velcro,
cling to its face like a marionette.
Lightning lives in snow-covered rocks.

It’s still illegal to build towers on the summit.
Ski resorts can’t use artificial snow.
Plowed Flagstaff streets refurbish trails,
domain of Kachinas, holy to Hopi.

Spirit essences visit the reservation
celebrate from Solstice through Summer.
They bring the blessing of enough water
to grow blue corn on the desert floor.

Rainbows connect sky to earth.
Full moons over Walpi
take me one step over the edge
into the fifth world.

I fall into the prism of the bear and butterfly,
drink from tales of spider woman,
dream of praying in the Kiva,
and sleeping in a cave.
March 8, 2001-Flagstaff, Arizona

11) Su Young Ef Hoya (Little Left-Handed Hunter)

A white man can never be Hopi,
yet, can catch Hopi drum/flute fever.
Incurable disease of the rhythm of the heart
snake dances under your skin,
spreads spider web threads
through your soul.

We watch our sons climb cliffs,
above scattered pottery shards and petroglyphs.
The wren visits for the fourth time,
guides us on secret trails
back a thousand years in time
to the edge of the Second Mesa.

We twist and turn,
spin through snow and mud,
on a journey to sacred sites
where the sides of clouds are visible,
wind causes corpuscles to whistle,
sun and moon live and breathe in fire-painted skies.

Little left-handed hunter stands
among ancestral rock and feather altars,
where he too will be buried.
Proud to be Hopi,
body gently curved into fetal position,
he will return what he has taken from the land.
April 8, 2001-Grants, New Mexico

12) Wind on the Mesas

The wind on the mesas
blows my Hopiland hat under the car.

The wind at the Cultural Center
almost lifts me off the ground.

The wind on the desert
scatters the sand into my blinking eyes.

The wind at the hotel
blows garbage in whirlpool circles around Dorothy’s bed.

It is such a strong wind that
it makes my blood cells wiggle.

I breathe chunky sand.
I eat crunchy sand.
June 21, 2001-Woodstock, New York

13) Driving Towards the Sunset

The road to the Mesas undulates with color.
The sun melts into the San Francisco Peaks,
dances on the Painted Desert.

Spectacular words in a poem can never encapsulate
this explosion of iridescent reds and oranges,
vibrant splashes of yellows and purples that
splatter against a blue, black and white-clouded horizon.

The sunset seems to have a life of its own.
I want to possess this moment of time.
But, it is there for the heart to savor
for only an instant.
April 2, 2001-Hopi Cultural Center, Second Mesa, Arizona

14) Mystic Vista

We sit on the bank of Oak Creek,
cradled by white sycamore roots.
Gabriel plays his flute.

We pass a medicine wheel of stone,
touch Juniper branches
twisted by the vortex,

We climb the Mystic Vista,
where the Hopi used to come
to fast and pray.

A helicopter flies overhead.
The cell phone rings.
A bell sounds behind her ear.

Subtle molecules swim and whirl.
The elders hold me.
The quiet is born.
March 13, 2001-Sedona, Arizona

15) It’s Red Dirt This and Red Dirt That

I have yet to touch or feel
the “spirituality” of Sedona.
self-named energy vortex,
a western movie set,
plopped in the valley of
consecrated cathedrals,
sheared crimson stone.

Green goblins have prostituted landscapes.
Savage developers have embezzled
blood from the rocks,
raped Snoopy’s innocent inner-child,
ravaged spectacular desert horizons
with cloned strip mall mentality.

Magnetic crystalline energy is pilfered.
Electric/telephone wires,
strung like Christmas lights
across scarlet buttes and mesas
surround Oak Creek Canyon,
where eroded red silt floods Dry Creek.

Uptown is a rubber tomahawk.
The storefronts appear unique.
But, within shops,
the non-distinct cigar store Indian,
Boomtown Western motif,
humiliates the natives.

I’ve yet to meet sincere human beings,
locals with smiles,
clerks with good attitudes.
Even t-shirts are dyed
in robbed red dirt.
At night you could be anywhere.
March 13, 2001-Sedona, Arizona

16) A Journey Begins With the First Step Within

I am inspired by my journey
of a thousand steps within.
Beginning with the first step,
my child’s voice awakening.

Nature overwhelms, yet embraces.
In a measureless confrontation of elements,
animated fleecy clouds,
spiky cogs and puffs of light,
illuminate the blinding surface of
emerald bays and indigo lakes.

Gathering pines, silent sentinels standing guard
over the parched parquet of desert floor,
surrounded by brooding sandstone cliffs,
are nourished by a swath of sifted-twisted light.

I immerse in the relentless snare drum pulse
of restless ocean hum,
ascending rush of wings,
into the silver lining of an unblinking sky.

Pristine messengers graze on folded crevices,
over placid foothills of massive purple altars.
Lilting lilac clouds yawn skyward
over the garb of velvet mountain thrones.

The border between lifting earthbound bluffs
and spilling light spectrum of sky is indistinguishable.
The connection of non-selective thoughtlessness
to arbitrary destruction of nature is undeniable.

Returning from my journey
of a thousand steps within,
I surrender to the knowledge
gained by living God’s scheme.
March 21, 2001-Sonoma, California Imprint

Publication Date: 11-14-2009

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