A Pre-Columbian Glimpse Inside a Kiva (a poem)

Within the Canyon of the Ancients,

in southwestern Colorado,

lies an Anasazi ruin called

"Lowry Pueblo," containing one

gigantic kiva where people

bustle around dressed in

bright red robes garnished with

eagle feathers and turquoise.

The summer people sit on

one side while winter people

sit on the opposite side upon

wooden planks to tell their stories,

whether of summer warmth and

maturing crops of corn and beans

in the midst of a cold winter, or of

severe blizzard endurance during

the heat of mid-summer when

Sleeping Ute Mountain lies in haze,

all while a lone medicine priest

stomps loudly on pine-wood boards

to make the sound of thunder,

or of frozen, popping cottonwoods.