<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=us-ascii"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div class="">Mother Church No. 3</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><i class="">Kin Kletso/Yellow House</i></div><div class=""><i class="">Chaco Canyon, San Juan County, New Mexico</i></div><div class=""><i class="">Anasazi Ruins, AD 1125-1130</i></div><div class="">for Henri, at 2</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">You step down into the Flat World</div><div class="">Then ask me to say it, to explain</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">How our name can mean both ancestor</div><div class="">And enemy. Your body begins in four directions.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Here, one calendar takes eighteen years.</div><div class="">I am three. One day is an eyelash.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Your body is a segment of prehistoric road,</div><div class="">A buried stairwell with only the top stair obvious.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">We are alluvial, obsidian.</div><div class="">Sometimes the ground swells</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">With disappointment; sometimes we know our mountains</div><div class="">Will be renamed after foreign saints.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">We sing nine-hundred-year-old hymns</div><div class="">That instruct us in how to sit still</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">For forty-nine years</div><div class="">Through a fifty-year drought.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">We climb down through the hole anyway,</div><div class="">And agree to the arrangement.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>- Robin Coste Lewis</div></body></html>