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Lowbagger
Poetry
The Growing People
By Hunter Kachina
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To my teacher, the plants are growing
people.
He tells us this as we sit in a dimly lit auditorium
in the forestry building built to look like a ski lodge.
He is alive as he speaks of the yucca root for soapmaking
and pinyon sap for coughing
and juniper smoke for healing spirit wounds.
I know
that the artificial room doesn't diminish his power,
but that he is not at home here,
uncomfortable.
I pretend
we are out on his ranch,
kneeling over little onions and mints
just popping out of the springtime soil.
In the
distance, I envision his sheep and cows and horses,
silently chewing their cud, watching us.
They are
the four leggeds,
no different than us, the two leggeds,
or the plants they eat, the growing people.
He tells us to talk to the plants, sing to the plants,
honor the plants, give prayers to the plants.
He says,
three times:
We don't just take, always give back
We don't just take, always give back
We don't just take, always give back.
He says,
three times:
They are not just plants, but people
They are not just plants, but people
They are not just plants, but people
I walk out of the classroom
into the forestry building atrium
decorated with stiff
polyester factory made couches and
plaques on the wall commemorating
institutional and academic achievements.
There is a celebration underway,
which we must walk through to leave the building.
The partygoers are white women in flowered dresses
and makeup applied to hide their age,
standing submissively next to their partners,
old white men in suits and ties.
One of them has a knife in hand, its blade inches away
from a fat white sheet cake with white sugary frosting
and words in green gel celebrating the centennial.
A hundred years. A hundred years of what?
Fire suppression, clear cutting, separation from the land, dominance,
power.
To the ones in control, the plants are an easy means to an end.
To my teacher,
the
plants are the growing people.
The Peaks
By Hunter Kachina
Thunderous bellows climb from
her inner chambers, playing harmonic
rhythms for a synchronous dance in which the towers of ominous
clouds spin lightning cracks across the sky like shock waves.
Here, creation begins with electric thrusts, just a shadow of
the lava and fire she breathed so many eons ago.
Eternity
echoes midnight moon sets,
sun rises, snowflakes flutter,
moon rises, sun sets.
Powerful
beyond measure, she stands sentinel like a lighthouse
in the distance guiding her warriors back home from the lands
they have traveled to
Each and
everyone protected by her massive presence, encouraged
by her constancy, awed by her radiance,
Always
reassured that when she is done with her private affairs
conducted behind a veil of dense grey clouds, she will reveal
herself to us once more in even greater splendor and luminescence
than before.
Katchina
spirits call her name, pound their bare feet in the
dust of her wake, bear her tears in leather buckets of water,
bow their heads in prayer as they attempt to put into words and
motions and song how important she is to everyone she protects.
Stars
crowd around her head and she beckons to them, come, hear
my song, come, join in my dance, come, feel my motionless movement
as I march with my sister mountains into your memories and bodies
and hearts.
Hunter Kachina was inspired to write these
poems by the San Francisco Peaks and the native people who call them
home. Kachina writes from the Flagstaff area. Both the Peaks and nearby
Black Mesa face development and extraction threats. For more
information visit the sites:
www.blackmesais.org
www.savethepeaks.org
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