I am honored to be apart of this night.
April 6th at the Sedona Creative Life Center.
This is a beautiful Poem.
Hear clear the tones of cedar flow,
Reminding us from place afar,
A gift of art from Navaho,
a sea of sound — a reservoir.
Soft breathy notes pushed from the wood
with airy tones in triple trill,
a calling tune to brotherhood
that bathes the heart when all is still.
Listen to it call the eagle,
the bear, the deer and buffalo,
brothers of the kingdoms regal,
sister spirits of long ago.
The ancient sounds from wooden voice,
in sentient wait below the bark,
now sing in beauty to rejoice —
returning song to Meadowlark.
The drumming hearts of The Diné
transcends in beating pulse sublime
As cadenced rhythm does portray
a nature here , but still divine.
Shoshone, Ute and Navaho,
proud native hearts of desert west,
Hopi, Zuñi, Arapaho
beat sacred drums for vision quest.
From spirit then came arrows gold
to find their set within the heart,
So stories old can then be told
as feathers’ stride ’long sacred dart.
Our totem’s call in night’s dark damp
As lovers watch the lunar light
That shows the way to dreamers’ camp
and wings our minds for freeing flight.
There’s crafted shafts and fluted points,
painted ponies and shaman's chant
Reprise the Past and then anoint
the drumming with a step courante.
When beat of heart and those of drums
transform the time of honor due,
Ancestral rest then finally comes
and spirit heart is birthed anew.
Some hardened stones are all that’s left
of tribal lands of long ago.
Yet knowing tongues now speak of times
when native hearts again bestow —
A sacred cleansing at earth’s breast
with blue corn hallowed on the ground,
And thanks go out from modern minds
acknowledging a pulse profound.
Distant brother, come share the blood
of pale skin and ancient shame.
Trust long has bled, as casualty
of broken treaties that proclaim –
The word of some was as the sand
when empty wind would fly its course
And wipe the promise from the heart
when soldiers took with no remorse.
Gentle sister of grassy plain,
help calm the atavistic rage
That lingers as our history.
Release its curse with smudging sage —
And see the smoke then dissipate
the agony of saddened past
That hardened into crusted doubt
when lands were taken that were vast.
So hear the tones of cedar flow,
Reminding us from place afar,
A gift of art from Navaho,
a sea of sound — a reservoir.
The breathy notes pushed from the wood
with airy tones in triple trill,
is calling us to brotherhood
that bathes the heart when all is still.
Listen as it calls the eagle,
the bear, the deer and buffalo,
brothers of the kingdoms regal,
sister spirits of long ago.
These ancient sounds from wooden voice,
in sentient wait below the bark,
now sing in beauty to rejoice —
returning song to Meadowlark.
by Rolland G. Smith