Poems #2 & #3: Normal (NOT!) and Exploring Canyons

April 2, 2019

Sorry, no autism poem this year, but this was what was on my mind. Oh, and sorry for all the late posting of poems I'm on vacation with family! These were scribbled on the days they say just posted late.

Normal is a Scam

Everyone thinks they have a pretty normal childhood

Until they become adults

Most know it is the likelihood

It wasn’t like some cults

They had weird parents with unusual habits

And the odd sibling or two

They think they were raised savvy

With more than a clue

When they ask around to have a shocking revelation

That they need more patience

They discover that people have all kinds of standards

Of what passes as the norm

They find that there is more than the badlands

Or being shipped off to a dorm

They find that complex prayers over dinner

Or left to fend for your own

All of it can be called home

There is no one thing that clings

To the map of getting where we need to go

April 3, 2019

There is so much more I’d like to put into words, but it comes out as impressions and some I can’t even articulate yet. Our guide, Ben was amazing and explained well the history of the canyon. What I can’t quite show yet in poetry is his deep love for this place. 

I’m glad we took this tour as it reminds me of so much I don’t put into reality, but I have read in books of the Native Americans. Reading what they've lived is so much easier for me to ignore who they were and are today. For now I have a few impressions of this morning and my mixed up thoughts about what I took in.

Feasting on Crumbs at Canyon De Chelly

Red rocks holding up a new birth sky

Rusty dust kicked up by truck, jeep, and rover caravans

Crisscrossing muddy orange red trickles

That blossom with the recent rain

A swollen belly having swallowed
All that washes through here

The canyon echoes with the stories

Navajo guide telling us who marked what

When armies fought on both sides

And the government came in again and again

Wrecking, taking or claiming

forcing the will of no one
to punish for no reason

those who did no harm

but want to farm in peace

they are moved in and out

and back and forth

forced to march on and on

Ben points past his time to back

When Hopi voices rang out

Carrying snakes to shake and dance

The hiss frightening onlookers

That come to see the recreation of ceremony

Tiny hand prints, frog men, storm dancers

Kokopelli playing tunes

On high cave wall crescent moons

He points to ruins tucked high up in tiny coves

Dwellings of so long ago where the river

Cut through at doorstep

Now water runs far below

Only eagles can knock on those doors

Jumbled jostling for miles

We watch a group on horseback

Ride by taking in land and sky

Waving us on the invisible path

With duck and cat rock formations

Mid-morning lights bouncing

Reveling every hue of rust strewn rock

With streaks of grey, black, and yellow

Veins pumping into the canyon’s heart

Cottonwood trees seem to dance to its beats

In pulsing sun and shadows of this sacred ground