Anasazi...A Poem

Life's precious, worthless droplet, conceived, expended

throughout time, after a thousand years evaporated

in dry canyon dwellings eight hundred years ago.

Like ancient Rome and empire Inca, come and gone,

the people, in demanding desert circumstance, came to build

apt architecture, live their lives and disappear.

No one understands where or why they went, or died.

They survived one thousand years Arizona's

arid clime, found sustenance; larva, yucca, deer;

built cunning stone constructions -- cliff walls facing south --

whose overhangs deflect the torrid summer sun,

allowing slanting access to warming winter rays.

All that remains of a thousand years of history

-- these sites, their pottery, the mystery of their fate --

puzzles the minds of men alive today

troubled by their own uncertain destiny.

Copyright by Don Gray