Speak for me,
slowly,
and let me hear
the words I once knew
again in my ears.

Say them softly,
let my memories wake.
Speak for me slowly,
and let my fingers trace
the shape
your lips make.

Tell me not
of the things you plan to say,
while the sun is shining
and my dreams are fading away.

Let us talk
of practical things in the light,
for of this I can speak
quite fluently.

Look, I will show you how to begin,
how to speak
of things that have come to mean
more than the language
of our dreams.
To the point that the words are forgot,
their meanings
becoming symbols
of other things.

We will talk of practical things
and things that mean naught.

Look now you,
let's talk about my boots.
They are old.
They tell me of my feet.
Good they are,
and long lasting.

Not till now
have I noticed
that the prints they leave,
could have been
from any man.

I take them off when I sleep.
I put them on when I wake.

I take them off when I dance,
when my feet must
pound the ground
to shake loose the rain
and I must be free
of all the white man's things.

I put them on when I am done
and go to the church.
I light my candle
and promise my god
my dance means nothing.
that the printed words made in a factory,
mean more to me than rain.

That my dance is for tourists
out grown and un-needed,
that my dance is finally known
as a saintly thing.

I silence my heels
so they make no sound,
so no one
is bothered
by my presence here.
No one knows
 it is my weight on the ground.

That is the way
we are taught.

See that hawk above.
In my grandfather's time
we were taught it meant the coming of great things.
Now,
the bird circles
only the dead
and dying,
and the young take out their guns
for practice.

My children shuffle through the sand,
listening to other worlds
and deaf to the land.
Where they used to learn
to listen to their dreams,
now they plug their ears
with small manufactured things
and cannot even hear the coming of the rain,
for this they must watch TV.

I climb from the mesa
into the hills
and seek out caves
to be alone.

I take my boots off
and stand feeling the sand,
thinking that perhaps
I do not understand
what it means to be a man.

Nothing I have been told
fits.

The elders laugh at me,
and say,
I should be so grateful
to have begun the return
to the Indian Way.

And the priest
frowns at me
and says,
'pray, my son, pray.'

No one wants to hear
me question my existence,
No one wants to hear my voice,

Listen to me now
and I will ask you
while I stand here,
barefoot and away from electric lights,

Am I of this land?
Or am I of Christ?

And you,
the mountain,
who sits so far away,
I know you have seen more
then you would ever say.

So speak to me,
speak for me
who has lost their voice

speak slowly,
so I can follow
the words.
 
Let my memories wake.

Let me place my fingers
in your mouth
and feel the vibration
of the words I once knew,
and that we once sang
and that we once sang

in some
forgotten dream.