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Navajo Dawn
by Diane Westergaard

    My Lord what a morning
   When the stars begin to fall

On this November night
I am back in the red rock

of the San Juan River,
waters opaque with silt.

On slickrock above a wall
where Kokopelli pipes

his eternal silent song,
an oboist plays Mozart.

It always sounds different
depending on the season.

The firmament arcs over the dark;
Arcturus, the quarter moon,

the last meteorite. Not even
a bird breaks the silence.

Stars fade to blue glass sky
behind calf-colored buttes.

Cottonwoods, still as milk,
accept the expanding light,

a curtain between angels
and the ravens that comfort me

during the day with their
monogamous croaks.

Like the door of a hogan
my tent faces east. Next to it

I huddle in the cold and wait
with the still eyes of a lagoon.

 

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