Navajo Blanket - Circa 1860

I spent the past week in Phoenix with an afternoon in Old Town Scottsdale. Native American pottery and blankets abound, but few are old school. Those artifacts can be found in the Heard Musuem, promoting the cultures and arts of American Indians in the Southwest.



Navajo Blanket - Circa 1860


I am the soft wool
of the shorn sheep
spun once for yarn,
twice for strength.

Steamed berries, bark
transformed me
into warrior red
and starless black,
colors of a chief's blanket.

A dark-eyed woman
in an Arizona canyon
with hands tough
from grinding corn
and soft from mothering,
patterned my soul
into a storyteller.

Long after she tied the last
of my four corner knots
my voice remains witness.

I warmed her children
in chill desert nights,
protected them
from pitting winds
but could not save them
from the wrath
of government soldiers.

I was rolled, tied
behind the saddle
of a rifleman,
roamed the high deserts,
was lost to a gambler
from Denver
who had no use for me.
Nor did his sweetheart.

Years of neglect
in a dusty back room
fixed my memories:
smoky grey streaks
from campfires,
ground-in dust
from arid mesas,
a rusty brown stain
from the Indian wars.



Marilyn Aschoff Mellor