The Loom Canoe
The Navajo believe that a flaw allows the spirit of
the blanket
to have the freedom to roam and for the blanket to never end.
The
mother of all spiders taught our mothers
to weave. The weft of song passed
through the warp of
breathing, one
continuous yarn.
When
First Man and First Woman rose
from the underworld, they planted
soles on soil—night sky
a flaming lake.
First
Woman built a loom with rays
& rock crystal, hammered with lightning bolts.
The loom cradled us,
a canoe. Our sway
wove
whorls, our chants purpling wool.
While fingers plucked threads, the shaman’s
yowl coaxed Buffalo to
thunder,
mountains woven in a zigzag
of
black & red. Rain fringed banks
of the arroyo. The blanket began to weave
itself, bleeding brown
& mulberry into sand.
Sawing
mouth-bows, gods gnashed the sun.
Rays slanted: sumac & arrow weed,
corn pollen & oxblood.
After ferrying our ghosts
to
the watery underworld, the loom canoe sailed
back to the house of our wound,
our flaw. The door was the
shaman’s
maw, chanting lives into pattern.