Coso Means Land of Fire: Little Petroglyph Canyon, Mohave Desert, California.

Joshua tree, raising the stumps of its arms,

the many-broken and the unbroken,

long-haired prophet wordless

for vision.

The smoky-purple berries of the juniper,

Madonna,

della Robbia blue.

And inside their cases

the little brown rosary beads of the pinon pine.

China Lake, seabed of sun,

crater and wash and draw of the moon.

At the center,

a dot.

A circle surrounding,

and surrounding that circle,

a third.

And radiating out from the center,

one line

after another,

the spokes of a great wheel.

Where the sun sleeps,

the rose windows of the Sierra.

Where the sun wakes,

the altar tables and arches,

the sanctuary and crypt of the Argus range.

Underfoot, basalt, rhyolite, cinder crust, obsidian.

For thousands of steps, at nightfall, at dawn,

a scatter of stars.

Overhead, sandstone and alkali dust.

The granite of feathering clouds.

Right hand and left, a playa of borax 

and gypsum, seams running copper and turquoise and silver,

the endless blessing of salt.

Who can walk into this canyon and not know it is holy.

And know he does not belong. And know

she is home.

Spiral

whose spiraling

becomes hooded serpent. Zigzag

dance, sidewinder 

path of river and stream.

Crooked way, broken

trail.

The lodgepole ladders of ascent

and descent,

the tally marks

the dead ends the cutbacks.

Maps and blank slates of meandering and emergence.

A baby does this writing, the elders say,

a baby called pah or oh.

Come out at night,

you can hear the tapping,

like a woodpecker among tall pine.

New drawings are being carved out.

No baby does this writing, the elders say,

no native American. Not the Old Ones,

not the young.

Not Paiute, and not Shoshone.

Not Panamint or Timbisha, not Kawaiisu or Chemehuevi.

Not Tubatulabal or Monache. Not Owens Valley.

Ask someone, see if they answer.

Breath cloud that leaves the mouth empty,

returns to the mouth full.

Life force that shrivels and swells and explodes

like the stars.

Beyond the bared teeth of the checkerboard bear,

the leaping vigilance, soundless bark

of the dog.

Cliffs too high to be climbed,

springs and tanks

where a solstice brings water or dust.

Go out some morning,

and you find no rock drawings there.

Come back in the evening,

the writing that was not there in the dawn

is glowing like burning coals

at dusk.

Head like a fire ring a whirlwind

the spiral wheel of a comet

and upon the head

the feathered headdress the topnotch

of the quail.

Torso of reeds reflecting

in water.

Legs like short walking sticks

that taper and change

into the three-toed, claw-taloned feet

the three-note soft falling call

of night-seeing owl.

In the right hand the bent hunting bow,

three shafts in the quiver of the left.

Obsidian points,

fire-hardened and flaked to a razor edge.

One to pierce the dark mind,

open the night gate and slay the bighorn.

Two to penetrate the heart and release the rainfall

unlock the downpour and slow seeping spill

the fine-water shower of dreams.

Three to complete the circle, dance the ghost dance.

Strike the iris within the pupil,

greet the face in the pool.

Here in the malpais you walk into a canyon

and never come out.

Here in these badlands you go blind.

Lose your hearing.

Lose your power to speak.

Here in the low desert they call Fire Valley,

the high desert they name Fire Mountain.

Here you become a baby again,

here you become spirit.

How it shines, the four-pointed star

of the smiling face.

Two-faced smile, She Who Watches

and knows

why morning and evening star are the same.

On the porch by her wheelchair

the old woman lifts one hand over her eyes

to look where the hunter

will rise. And taking a stick that is lying nearby

she begins to draw in the dust.

There is a daughter standing around, a granddaughter.

And they look on. They watch her write in the sand.

And no one can read what was written.

And all the while she is writing, and

when she was finished writing,

not a word was spoken,

not a word came out of her mouth.

Only the sound of a stick drawing in dust.

And when she is finished writing,

daughter and granddaughter

come to her side.

The old and the young, the three generations,

they see what has been written

and no one speaks.

Over in the corner a spider is spinning her web.

The sticky strands, and the dry.

They spread

like a crack in the earth.

They spread like a crack in the night.

In the center

the little circle,

and around that circle

another.

And radiating out from the center

four rays,

one for every direction,

making a cross

that points to the ends of the earth.

And around the four rays of the cross

and around the outer circle

twenty-five dots.

Thirteen above, twelve below.

And around every dot

empty space.

Moon

at the beginning and end

of its cycle.

Sun

standing still

in the pendulum of the solstice.

Shaman who seeks and seeking finds

life and death wear one skin

in the trance.

Shape

the shape of a wolf whose legs

before and behind bend like a twolegged walking.

Form a circle with your right hand,

trace its shape in the air.

Form a circle with your left hand,

feel the little wind it makes when the circle is closed.

In one motion bring the hands together,

feel the connection between them.

Now over these circles that are joined together

draw a line that stretches above them,

at a distance and yet parallel.

Once the boat-bodied, claw-footed sheep

moved in waves.

Like bright and dark water together

like cirrus and cirrocumulus and cirrostratus 

their shadows covered the plains.

Once like the tall walking rains that come sometimes before

sometimes after the thunder

the heavy-mantled buffalo slept and woke and ran

like the lightning

that rises and falls on the high mountain range.

Now the world is turned upside down,

and the bighorn sheep walk the peaks.

Now the worlds spin out of control,

and the buffalo herds are grown so thin

they drift

like the leaves

over grassland and prairie.

Once there was silence,

and the silence was enough.

A world was able to pass between worlds.

A world was able to walk

one to another.

Now there is only talk.

Morning and evening coyote howls.

And owl keeps calling, asking your true name.

STEVE LAUTERMILCH is a poet and photographer living on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. His photographs of petroglyphs, reproduced in this issue and on the cover, have been featured at the Ghost Fleet Gallery in Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina.