Anasazi Ruins Poem by Louva Leslie Merrill

I see their zigzag art form
Left by passing snake on desert's slate,
Then edge into a gully deep between red walls
Adorned by pictures pecked out long ago. Grasping holds for fearful hands and feet,
Up cliffs with varnish stripes I grope,
And once I slip - but safe transport
Back to an age without a history. Shimmers from the shifting sand
Distort the outline of a door
Which seems to waver in and out of square.
Ragged top of broken wall still bears the rafter
Of a roof no longer there, to keep
The molten sun from baking earthen floor. And in the empty sunken round
Of ancient Holy Place, I find
A once-used rock-plugged
entrance to another world below. While from the distance, scarcely heard,
The wind wafts back the long forgotten eerie tones
Of hump-backed Kokopeli's magic flute.