Pueblo Dance

by John Brandi

Below the double-peaked caldera, the painted alcoves, the sacred shrines, the canyon closes in. Coral cliffs, buff-colored layers of compressed ash, blue water running through. Park the pickup, walk a cottonwood gulch, come to the adobe church, then into the tangled village lanes, drawn by the chest-whumping sound of thunder. Feast day! The old pueblo alive with drums, song, ceremonial colors. “Come eat!” Someone signals from a door. A Pueblo home opens. Family, relatives, visitors sit at the big table by the kitchen. Women in bright cotton dresses set out bowls of red-chili stew, boiled squash, chicos, baskets of bread, plates of enchiladas,potato salad, wafer-thin piki, sweet empanadas, purple Jell-O topped with Kool Whip. Across from me a dancer enjoys a break, red-ochre on his cheeks, parrot feathers in hair. Outside, deer, elk, antelope, bighorn sheep prance out of the hills into the plaza, pendants and shells jangling. The dancers don’t imitate animals, they have become animals. The Buffalo Maiden— flanked by two high-stepping shaggy beasts, her feathered crown gleaming, her lithe steps floating her aloft between the pounding hooves — is Shakti, primordial life force, a tremor of music and form. Raising eagle feathers to sky, she presses blue corn to breast, dips, turns, bows to the red earth, bows to drummers and chorus. Driving home after a Pueblo feast, the land never looks the same. Mountains iridesce, hills roll with chromatic pitch. Settling in, I kindle a fire and step out for more wood.

                                    Winter stars!
Traveling out, I’ve traveled
deeper in. 

                                                                                      Jemez, NM