byRoberta D. Joe
- Bobby has a standing wooden wardrobe
She rolled them up
- filled with rainbow waving Yeibichei.
Thursday night
- stored them in the wardrobe
- because they would not
- lie quietly
- in a row
- on the bare floor.
Rainbows were strewn everywhere.
- the Yeibichei chanted
- a celebration
West colors were on the wrong hangers.
- North colors were in the east.
The doors of the wooden wardrobe shook
- South colors were inside out on the floor.
The wardrobe could not containThe wooden doors flew open!
- the enormous noise
- of rainbow waving Yeibichei.
Bobby answered the door when the police arrived.
- Neighbors called the police.
She invited them insideThey found no evidence of the reported disturbance.
- out of a restless cloudburst
- and whirling lightning.
The storm pattern dispersed.Bobby picked up
- Friday morning was quiet.
The first spring thunderstorm was over.
- the sacred prayer sticks
- to carefully
- rewrap them in rainbows.
From Storm Pattern: Poems from Two Navajo Women by Della Frank and Roberta D. Joe,
Navajo Community College Press
© 1993 Roberta D. Joe
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