Canyon de Chelly - White House Trail

by

Donald Levering

for Chip Goodrich

---

snow at the rim
but our eyes' descent
through millenia
of stone
to the river's thread
below
catches the breath

---

being beneath the body
the feet can only follow
the steep trail
down
yet gravity
cannot keep Chip's eyes
from rising
to eddies of sandstone
cliffs
as we achieve
perfect vertigo
at each switch-
back

near the bottom
the trail turns
fearful
melted snow
has muddied the path
through a tunnel
that banishes sunlight
and turns thoughts back
to de Chelly
in the garb of an
unclaimed ancestor
sergeant in Carson's army
pursuing Navajos

between these steep faces

torching hogans and orchards
but finding no indians
until dusk
when a thousand campfires
mock us from the rim

---

we walk away
from a billion years
of stone overhead

afternoon light

spills onto the canyon floor
cookstove smoke rises
through a survivor's hogan
a million water-shoots

the winter's growth
of willows

shimmer

the glint of water
seen from the rim
stretches before us
a frozen stream

imagine a freshet
with the verve
to cut such a canyon

its surface gleams
tenative crystals

winter lightning
in the ice
under feet

sliding above the current

by the grace of the gods

my eyes

people the pockets
of sandstone cliffs
with rooks

impossible

fossils

dinosaur eggs

---

how surprising
and how natural
the pueblo called
White House

appears

under a massive overhang
of red rock
like the nest
of mud daubers
a thousand years ago
Anasazi women
ground corn here
children played cat's cradle
with willow withes
men smoked and watched
the falling of the daily
shadow from the south wall
across the plaza

what a place
for a human hive

the snowy rim
a season behind

this sun-facing adobe

my friend

meditates

I peel off layers of clothes
orange rind

and brush away

mid-winter flies

---

sheep bells
float through my drowse
the Navajo herder's
clicking tongue
signals his sheep
from this house of ghosts

Chip
seems to
quit breathing
all solar plexus
he leans toward
the convex
overhang

under a hawk

hitching thermals

finally discerning
footholds
in the rock
to the rim

where the ghost

of a Navajo sorcerer

conjured apparitions

before the Spanish captain

camped below

who turned his troops back

---

something calls

shepherd

or

swallow

---

leaving the ruins
by the same trail
of armies
in dazed retreat upstream
past the looming monolith

s
p
i
d
e
r
r
o
c
k

where the weaver's mentor

spider-woman

dwells

resting at the rim
we enter the long thoughts
of sheer rock faces
where swallow-nesting peoples
have hewn footholds
between worlds

the one a repeating
chronicle
of futile conquest

of the other

hidden in de Chelly's
stone vaults
glimpsed in petroglyphs

where deer

imps

flute-players

dance

---

From OUTCROPPINGS from Navajoland by Donald Levering, Navajo Community College Press
© 1984 Donald Levering

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