Can you hear them? The tribal chants
Chanted only when a member advance
Can you feel it reverberating in your bones?
Can you hear the distant tribal people's tones?
With binoculars - watch the tribal daughters dance
There's the chief with a headdress and mask
There's the tribal elder - concocting a potion
There's the diplomatic princess - with all of her devotion
There goes the knights and warriors - ready for the hunt
You can hear the distant fanfare - the trumpets trump
Stop and listen to the maracas bells
Gather 'round the campfire - listening to the stories they tell
Speaking Navajo to the chief - you will soon find
He's marrying off his daughter - 'cause now it's her time
Navajo celebration
death is life
wakan tanka in the sky
where earth people become holy people
the soul is now free from suffering
I believe I may be Navajo my mind is telling me so
I can't help it but when I dance the rain makes all things grow
The universe is in my heart the nation's will return
Respect for mother lay in her womb
The fire walkers will one day burn
A land returned piece by piece by lost souls who ravage all
There way of economic waste a capitalist disease
Bringing others to their knees
days are drawing near
Smell their souls fear
I believe I may be Navajo my mind it says so
Medicine plants leading the way
Nature again will grow
I hear the vibration all around spreading far and wide
Fire people have had their day
It's time to step aside.
Perched within the fair La Plata
just beneath the great San Juans
basking in the starlit rapture
as the dusk approaches dawn
Lies the point of inspiration
where lost souls have found their way
each unto the revelation
offered there in Rafter J.
Abandoned by the Anasazi
tamed by Ute and Navajo
across the river Animas
between the rock and blinding snow
Lies a spiritual awakening,
visions of the ancient ways,
a timeless wisdom rising, breaking
through the beams in Rafter J.
A refuge in the course uncharted
a tower of hope where love redeems
to bring us back to where we started
in our youth and with our dreams
To find our peace there in the mountains,
find the God to whom we pray,
to find new life there in the fountains
springing forth from Rafter J.
I ride the mesas
Wherever I go
Are Hopi, Zuni,
And tall Navajo
So many people
On dry, barren land
All Trump says is,
"They sure have got sand!"
A red Navajo blanket
Shines in the setting sun—
Marking a cowboy’s final rest
When that long ride is done.
There will be no wood marker
Or stone to note his place—
We’ll just remember laughter
And long recall his face.
“Please boys,” he asked us softly,
“Do one last thing for me
And put that Navajo rug
High where the world will see.
“An old dying Indian
Passed that blanket to me—
After I tried to save him
From sure death meant to be.
“Oh, it won’t last forever—
Like leaves it will soon fall—
But like a man’s life well-lived,
Beauty’s what we recall.”
So high upon that green hill
We placed blanket and grave,
Then said what words that we knew
In hopes a soul we’d save.
A red Navajo blanket
Shines in the setting sun—
Marking a cowboy’s final rest
When that long ride is done.
Looking for the formal definition, structure, and history of this poetry form? Visit the Poetry Dictionary entry below. Then return to explore how PoetrySoup members bring the form to life through their own poems.