Navajo Weaver by George Bascom

 $Unique_ID{AST00209}

$Title{Navajo Weaver}

$Author{Bascom, George S., M.D.}

$Subject{poetry}

$Journal{}

$Volume{}

$Date{1982}

$Log{}

                                 LATE ASTERS

                                Navajo Weaver

More than your patterned wool

Your rapt face speaks to me:

Dark, inward looking, strange,

Impassive, full of mystery,

Wrinkled with sun and something else.

How many strands your eyes have followed

  through the hanging warp, weaving,

    weaving, moving, moving,

      under, over, back again:

        a pause to batten, off again

      until the yarn seems by itself

    to move, the pattern to fulfill itself.

  No wonder you grow still and inward,

weave reverent errors in your work

  tend to something you have found

    in dye, design, and moving loom

      and speak about in wool and hue

        to weavers like yourself.

          I cannot break your trance

            nor you my wakefulness.

Attention twisted

Tight as yarn,

Your eyes near mine

Then move away.

The secret shared

We need not speak.

Weaving woman we are woven

  Loving beauty we are leaving

Moving spirits freely slaving

  Grieving watchers roving, roving

Braving virtue, daring thieving

  Woven, each of us is weaving

Intertwined, evolving ever

  Caught like color, winding, veering

Freezing vision into pattern

  Ever dying, now reviving

Dreaming, planning, and deceiving

  Life the deep is driving, giving,

Weaving, weaving into one.