The Sundance Wives Bleed at Four Corners

unending communion
with unseen forces all around them
ordeal of Four women who made vows
Oath signed in blood

flutes and drums their
witness

cliff curing techniques
secure in the bond that the
spiritual world has been renewed
communal spring equinox hosts spiritual
revival from a warlike turn

wounded knees
and bleeding hearts
their message apocalyptic
scratched onto the petroglyphs
by those who went before them

seekers and questers
communing with spirits where
revelations are cloud-borne where
they are losing their religion and gaining
their independence

rock formations heightening
their perceptions and the trees
full to receive the light, the truth and
nothing but the Truth; they retire in the
night after the day is done, their dreams
wrapped in a cornhusk after the bleed, they
write on kachina stationary keeping in the good
graces of the kivas tomorrow

Copyright Ms. Sage Sweetwater, firebrand lesbian novelist