Native Moon

I am nagual, my familiar is peregrine.
When the season is harvest full
and Ix Chel bathes the cooling desert
in her silver light,
I perch in the saguaro, watching,
until in a ghostly shimmer I see
the Surem rise out of the Yo Ania.
They unroll their shining lake
spreading it over the creosote plain,
for a feast at the place of the last dance
far from the modern, disapproving eyes
of monotheism and civilization,
all of existence still intertwined
enchanted, no duality,
no dichotomy of good and evil.
Passing gourds of balche spiked with morning glory
and slapping bones on stretched deer hides
coaxing a rhythm for the dance
the ritual of healing begins.
All the gods have gathered,
Klehanoai dances with them,
lightning in sheets rippling overhead
as Mama-Kilya keeps time.
Grandmother Metsaka sits at the edge of the firelight
warding away the darkness of Tokakami.

Tsohanoai calls, distant, a hint of gray on the horizon
and in a puff of smoke the celebrants disappear.
I am nagual, taking wing to begin the morning hunt,
a shadow outlined against the dust reddened orb
sinking in the western horizon.



Note:
Ix Chel is the Mayan moon goddess.
The Surem are nomadic precursors to the Yaqui People who chose to shun the rise of religion and civilization and live in a parallel universe, the Yo Ania.
Balche is a drink made from the bark of the balche tree mixed with honey and water and is mildly psychoactive, even more so when mixed with morning glory and other hallucinogenics. Believed to be used by ancient Mesoamerican cultures in religious rituals.
Klehanoai is a Navajo moon god who face is said to be covered with sheet lightning.
Mama-Kilya is mother moon, an Incan moon goddess important in the calculation of time and the Incan calendar.
Metsaka is the Huichol Indian moon goddess known as grandmother moon. She guards the huichol against Tokakami – their god of death.
Tsohanoai is the day bearer, a Navaho Sun God