Paula Gunn Allen
for Joe Bruchac
-
He's still telling about the time he came west
and was visiting me. I knew he
wanted to see some of the thingseverybody sees when they're in the wilds of New Mexico.
So when we'd had our morning coffee
after he'd arrived, I said,Would you like to go see some old Indian ruins?
His eyes brightened with excitement,
he was thinking, no doubt,of places like the ones he'd known where he came from,
sacred caves filled with falseface masks,
ruins long abandoned, built secureinto the sacred lands; or of pueblos
once homes to vanished people but peopled still
by their ghosts, connected still with the bone-old land.Sure, he said. I'd like that a lot.
Come on, I said, and we got in my car,
drove a few blocks east, toward the towering peaksof the Sandias. We stopped at a tall
high-security apartment building made of stone,
went up a walk past the pond and pressed the buzzer.They answered and we went in,
past the empty pool room, past the empty party room,
up five flights in the elevator, down the abandoned hall.Joe, I said when we'd gotten inside the chic apartment,
I'd like you to meet the old Indian ruins
I promised.My mother, Mrs. Francis, and my grandmother, Mrs. Gottlieb.
His eyes grew large, and then he laughed
looking shocked at the twowomen he'd just met. Silent for a second, they laughed too.
And he's still telling the tale of the old
Indian ruins he visited in New Mexico,the two who still live pueblo style in high-security dwellings
way up there where the enemy can't reach them
just like in the olden times.
From Skins and Bones, Poems 1979-1987 by Paula Gunn Allen, West End Press
© 1988 Paula Gunn Allen
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