Black Chaco Canyon Revery.

Reed, Harry A.

 ghost chorus wailing deep. Ancient minor keys disturb sandy
craters, echoing polyphonic, multihued yet voiceless melancholy only the
wind hears. Wind, spirit, ephemeral oracle, reciting clever verse,
confusing mortals, dispensing ambiguous beliefs. ghost chorus eruption,
swirls, creating mute ancient plaza, solitary occupant; black man
sipping Brazilian santos to salute the dawn.
 unanticipated tableaux, strikes awe. Chatter drowns chorus, onlookers
miss petroglyphs, stoic maize sowers, undulating lodge poles, bulls
cavort like cartographic satyrs, sunflowers in their hair praying for
rain. Soak-sunned black man absorbs warm adobe reflections trying to
ingest, decipher ghost chorus arias.
name that unfamiliar ethereal tune. shake unoffending dust from trail
broken hiking boots, ignore noisy tourist promenade, anazazi grit
mingles red Masai dirt, glance back at mechanisms poised to record
tumbleweed quartet crossing the savannah, what am I doing here? Winds
howling, chorus singing, black man basking in open air venues older than
calcified desert bones.
Conjure imaginary ancient urban processions like unknown soldiers
marking the solstice. ram's horn flutes, bone trumpets, skin drums
like cacophony drowning angry santa ana's whistling persistence,
marchers, feathered finery like narcotized, lurid, induced dreams
spangle across arid, dun-colored stage. was this place ever green?
Anasazi heard, calculated, various shades, tonal audibles of brown, much
like appreciating contemporary Michigan winter greys, nonnatives seldom
discern the subtleties.
ghost chorus roils, wailing, vibrating, deep within cold unoccupied soil
awakens solitary black man's soul. Can, will communication with
ancestors disappeared, but not gone, be possible? Snakes, Gila monsters,
revered symbols, burrow chambers, like intoxicated Kiva supplicants,
needing, seeking refuge. Ever-present Sun's tongue like blast
furnace bellows driving them deeper, hopefully, closer to departed
spirits. Lone black man shifts baseball cap, adjusts psyche to hear
ancestral music.
Petroglyphs, totemic sand, chanting singing the mystery. Symbolic
testimony, like ghost chorus a cappella meditations ringing down ancient
corridors, serenading previous occupiers enshrined for us to see, claim
affinity with, but never understand. solitary black man melds
comfortably with silent warm adobe walls, burnished sun splashed face
pondering the universe, in an empty coffee cup.