  IN SPRING
MORNINGThis morning, when I crawled from under my blanket, when I stood before my mother's hogan door, outside looked as if it had been crying. The sky was hanging heavy with gray tears. I stood at the door of my mother's hogan and looked out at the gray, sad morning. My father came. He stood beside us. He spoke in a happy way to me and to my mother. Then the gray tears on the sky's face melted. The clouds pushed away and the sun smiled through them. Now it is gray again, but I cannot forget that when my father spoke the sun came and looked down upon us. THE HOGANMy mother's hogan is dry against the gray mists of morning. My mother's hogan is warm against the gray cold of morning. I sit in the middle of its rounded walls, walls that my father built of juniper and good earth. Walls that my father blessed with song and corn pollen. Here in the middle of my mother's hogan I sit because I am happy. BREAKFASTOn the fire in the middle of her hogan my mother cooks food. My mother makes fried bread and coffee, and she cooks mutton ribs over the coals. My father and I and my mother, we sit on the floor together, and we eat the good food that my mother has cooked for us. POSSESSIONSWe have many things. My mother has many sheep and
">to new pastures. I can take them the long way around the arroyos, not through them, when we go to the waterhole. This way their little feet, their sharp pointed feet, will not make the cuts across your face grow deeper. This way the worn pastures can sleep a little and grow new grass again. I can do this to heal your cuts, to make you not so tired. Earth, my mother, do you understand? OLD GRANDFATHER GOATGrandfather Goat stands on the hilltop, shaking his whiskers, chewing something and looking wise. Sometimes when I ask him things he looks at me as if he knew. Perhaps he does. BABY GOATSBaby goats always are playing, climbing up and jumping down. This small one always stands on the top of the storehouse. He knows there are things to eat inside, I think. AFTERNOONAfternoon is long. The sun goes slowly across the sky. The sheep walk slowly, feeding. I see them against the sky in a long, slow line. I whisper to the wind to blow the sun and the sheep a little to make them hurry. But it blows only the clouds and the sand and me. SUNSETJust now I watched the sun going. It took a long time to say goodbye. I think it knew that the land and the things of the land were sorry it had to go. It said goodbye in such a good way. Just for a little time it made the sky and the rocks and the sand like itself to let them know how it feels to be sun. Then it went away and all things were still because the sun had gone. GREEDY GOATThe sheep know that the day is over, but Grandfather Goat stays behind to push his whiskers high up in a tree for one last bite. Old Greedy Grandfather Goat. BEAUTIFUL MOUNTAINBeautiful Mountain looks so blue and so cold and so lonely now that the sun and the sheep and I are going. If it were nearer to me and small, I could bring it into my mother's hogan under my blanket. Then I need not leave Beautiful Mountain out there by itself in the night. MEETINGSFor a long time there have been meetings of many men for many days. At the meetings there is talking, talking, talking. Some this way. Some that way. In the morning when my father leaves for meeting he says to us, "When I come here again then I will know if it is best to have many sheep or few sheep, to use the land or let it sleep." when my father comes home from meeting he does not know which talking-way to follow. Tonight when my father came home from meeting he just sat, looking and looking. My mother gave him coffee and bread and mutton, but my father just sat, looking. Then my mother spoke to me. |
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