Long beaks clashing like the swords
Of the standard-bearing, mail-fisted Crusader knights.
Red-shafted dips and head-bobbing feints -
The territorial drummings of a war-like dance,
And the highlander's call of woikawoikawoika,
Reminding us that the wise learn best
How to cherish the eternal now -
While fools know best how to smite.
took the weft of the evening sunset
and mixed it with the hematite red
of a rusted old butte, flint-lapped
by erosion and time, to color an Indian paintbrush
like a sun-fired plume,
blooming from May to September,
an eternal flame, a memorial,
to the blue-sky loving Ute, who were death-marched
like Old Testament tribes from their shining
Rocky Mountain home - exiled
to the deserts of Utah.
Our fingers and hands are always kept busy -
weaving the fabric of our lives. But our hearts
have the time. We see you there, present.
We say, Let me be of help. We say, Tell me all your
stories. Then, smiling, we say, Thank you. We listen
with our whole hearts to what you have to tell us.
We listen as we might to the sun's first warmth,
a sudden galloping storm, raindrops falling in a patter of tiny
silver hoofs on the plucked strings of a marimba.
Come, draw a bit closer into our circle. It's here we've
grown patient and wise, daily more steady on our course -
like the tortoise, with a lion's force to our words.
It's here we've grown strong because of the ways we
know how to listen, the ways we've learned how to share -
picking up the burdens in our lives, one by one, together.
We weave grace into the fabric of our lives with the blue
curve of the sky, the clay ochre of earth, the bright sunshine
of yellow gourds. We weave hope into the fabric of our lives
in plantain-leaf shades of perennial green.