Doug Roy, Star Tortoise, Cut Paper
Great Northern Road 2007
Cattle, exploration and exploitation of gas fields,
traffic on dirt roads, wind-borne soil
brush off and bury the road’s faint traces,
soon lost to the eye forever.
With possible shrines found along the way,
we Anglos called it a road
for we are always going somewhere
and have lost the idea of pilgrimage.
The road runs thirty miles straight north from Pueblo Alto
to Kutz Canyon, terminates at a stairway
into the gulch. A procession going north would have seen
distant snowcapped mountains, home of ancestors still more ancient.
It does not connect settlements,
has no commercial value Anglos would respect,
but pilgrims to Jerusalem or Canterbury might understand,
might seek to make the journey if they knew the road was there.
The people built a great channel
for the breath of life to flow from the North,
for the last breath of their lives to return.
When the people walked it
they went toward their dead,
to where each would finally be,
and returned along the way
the spirit arrives to flesh.
_____________
Bruce Parker