I see the yarn in the water but I do not see the magic that I think my mother must use to change her yarns to colors.
When I tell this to my mother, she laughs at me.
She says she has no magic in her dye kettle.
She says the plants in her dye kettle are the things which give colors to her yarns.
When my mother sits on her sheepskin, weaving a blanket on her loom I think it is like a song.
The warp threads are the drum beats, strong sounds underneath.
The colored yarns are the singing words weaving through the drum beats.
When the blanket is finished it is like a finished song.
The warp and the drum beats, the colored wools and the singing words are forgotten.
Only the pattern of color and of sound is left.
My mother took me in her arms. We sat together at her loom. She took my hands to guide them along the weaving way.
We did not weave straight across the loom. That is not our way.
We wove with one color for a little way up.
And then with another color for a little way up.
We wove not too tight and not too loose and pounded it down, pounded it down, pounded it.
But when I told my father, "See, I wove this blanket," my mother spoke sharply.
"We do not say things that are not true," she told me.
I hid my face away from the sharp words of my mother, but soon my mother's hand came gently to touch my hair.
It fills the arroyos with yellow water running in anger.
Great pieces of sand bank on the sides of the arroyos slide into the water with little tired noises and are lost for always.
The rain pools fill with water, rain water, fresh and clean and cold.
Sun comes now to comfort the land that the rain has frightened.
My father says, "Sun takes the rain water from the thirsty land back to the sky too soon."
But my mother and I, we are glad the sun comes soon.
Sun does not mean to rob the land of water.
I go with her to drive the sheep for I must learn to tend the flock.
It takes many steps to keep up with my mother.
It takes many steps to keep up with the sheep.
We walk till the day is done, till the sun goes and the stars are almost ready to come.
We walk to the water hole when day is at the middle.
We walk to the night corral when day is at the close, the sheep, my mother and my mother's Little Herder.