Old Navajo Games

Spider Woman taught string games
to keep thoughts in order, yet
only in winter, when spiders sleep,
or else will she tie your eyes shut.
You will learn about the night sky,
concentrate on star clusters, find planets
in your weaving patterns:
the earth is my mother, the sky my father.
Star pinching, the pattern to follow:
Female Arrowhead,
Big Snake, Lightning, Cloud. Weave in
the sacred four colours: white for dawn,
blue for the day, yellow for twilight,
black for the night.
Weave on child, weave the universe in motion,
play your string games, your sand games
in perpetual regeneration.

Breathe child, breathe
the sacred act of breathing! The Holy Wind
is in all the living, nothing exists in isolation.
It is h0zh= you long for, the good and the evil,
the natural and supernatural in balance, connectivity
to all living things. Follow the stars' constellations,
Scorpio, Cassiopeia, The Pleiades, Aldebaran,
Canis Major, Ursa Major, Sword of Orion
they all touch your body, each one its part assigned,
filling the space of your transitory nature.

Learn them, chant them, weave them
into your memory!
They will remind you how to live your life,
not the emotionally overtaxing, the highly pressured,
materially oriented, the spiritually depleted.
Seek your escape
from the fast paced, media blitzed world!
Walk in beauty, not the outward appearance
but order, blessedness, pleasantness
everything that lifts you.
Reach an old age by living
in harmony with the universe.

Breathe, child, breathe
the holy act of breathing! On breathing,
the powerful wind will enter.
Fingerprints and toe prints are its signals.
The whorls at the tips of your toes
hold you to the Earth.
those on your fingertips
hold you to the Sky.
This wind carries thought at conception.
When it ceases to blow inside you,
you become speechless.
Draw your string figures, child,
move and complete them
until Spider Woman will help to dissolve all.