Navajo Springs
for James Peshlakai
Three birds leave a tamarisk tree,
three birds as if they are one,
and the flick of a lizard
into a crackled boulder,
quickest motion,
like the stone's mouth,
like its tongue.
This lizard licks
uranium tailings leaching
from the mine into the water
above Moenkopi Village
When the government standards
are read at the public hearing:
Place an earth and cememt cap
over the tailings that will last
for a thousand years,
the company men smile slightly:
A thousand years?
We won't be here, this company.
Why, even this government...
A small man from the village
raises his hand:
A thousand years, he says.
We'll be here.
We buy corn from a man
selling Navajo Bibles too,
Bibles mixed in with corn the color of sky
tumbled in the back of his truck.
Home, he says,
is a clean heart,
is turquoise washed by rain
for a thousand years.
from On the Chinese Wall - New & Selected Poems 1966 — 2018
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