A Visit to My Mother’s Grave

Now twenty years old my mother’s tombstone looks brand-new. I draw clean air, count to ten and walk towards the west. My skeletons have been burnished golden they dance in the crimson morning. In a nearby alfalfa field I stop to breathe and watch some Paiute boys bucking bales off the parched back of their mother, the earth. They break for lunch in a small shack of corrugated tin. I have walked from the graveyard and into the hayfield just to visit with them. Through the rusted nail holes in the sheet metal roof puffs of light explode like ladyfingers of God-glint reflected and refracted on the brown boys’ sweat and I’m forced to sing this mirage of rainbows this mingled prayer this visit to my mother’s grave this soil of Nevada this soil of Wovoka this song of love for my people.