Alice Yazzie's Year Hardcover - 2004

Excerpt

January YAS NILT'EES

The snow slowed the world,
the Navajo world.
"Go see if the sheep are fine,"
Grandfather Tsosie tells Alice Yazzie.
"The hay is frozen
and so is the ground," says Alice, returning.
"The horses look like they blame me
for causing this cold."
Her nose red, her chin buried in sheepskin,
she carries the smallest lamb
into the hogan.
"Just for the night," says Alice Yazzie
holding the lamb.
"He's all new and starry.
He's too new to be cold."
Grandfather grunts.
He doesn't say no.

Alice heats milk in a bottle
over burning pinyon.
Grandfather watches.
The new lamb sucks.
The pinyon burns low.
The lamb goes to sleep.
His nose is a black star.

"It is cold out there," Alice tells Grandfather
as she goes to bed.
Grandfather nods.
He wears a red fl annel shirt Alice gave him for Christmas.
He looks at the low fi re.
He looks at the lamb.
Grandfather says
to Alice Yazzie,
to Alice Ben Yazzie,
"It was almost this cold
the night you were born."


February ATSÁ BIYÁÁZH

Alice Yazzie waits in the snow
for the yellow bus.
Yellow bus takes kids to school,
to the picture shows,
to the doctor for shots,
past the black earth
strip mined for power--
the kind of power
that white people know.
It hums through big wires
across Black Mountain,
across red canyons.
It isn't the power that Grandfather knows,
thinks Alice Ben Yazzie.
White Shell Woman told him soon they will leave:
the men and earth movers.
"Rainbows will come back," Grandfather says.
"Blue Corn Woman promises we shall have the land back.
All this will be ours."

The bus is late.
Alice watches the poles and transformers,
the big caterpillars grinding the earth.
Will they leave too late, wonders Alice Yazzie.
Will Grandfather travel to the spirit world
with the snow all dirty?
Will Dawn Boy find him?
Will the world grow clear?


From the Trade Paperback edition.

Media reviews

"Whether read alone or aloud, the poems tell an affecting story about contemporary Navajo life . . . Teachers will want to use this across curriculum." --Booklist

2004 CBC Notable Social Studies Trade Book for Young People

2004 Skipping Stones Honor Award

"There are books to be read again and again, and this is one." --ForeWord Magazine


From the Trade Paperback edition.