Indians who find
this pottery today
say
that everything
has its own spirit –
even a broken pot.

They say
the clay
Remembers
the hands
that made it.

Does it
remember
the cornfields too?
And the summer rains?
And the ceremonies
that held life together?

Here are the masks
and the costumes
and the great
dancing figures.
Here is the flute player
bent low over his song.

They say
that even now
the wind sometimes
finds
one of those songs
still in the clay
and lifts it out
and carries it
down the canyon
and across
the hills.

It is a small sound
and always far away
but they say
sometimes they hear it.

(Poem celebrating Prehistoric
Anasazi Pots – by Byrd Baylor)