Navajo Peak (a poem in two voices) by Deborah Hailey
In the winter of 1948 a plane crashed in the Indian Peaks west of Boulder, Colorado. It took three days to recover the three bodies. One victim left behind a two-year old son in Seattle. Twenty-five years later and thirty-five years ago, that son hiked up that mountain. I I go into the mountain where the body of my father lay Where the wreckage of the plane he rode is scattered. Returning each time, to wander near it, To climb the peak above it, Navajo, Straining to sense the presence of my father’s grave.
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I have looked into the faces of other men, searching there as well for a father lost. I never found him behind their eyes, struggling to see a son they never knew. I looked to find him within myself, as father to my own, but he is not me. He is not here; I have dreamed of him and even in the dream have never seen him. Once he spoke to me through the image and voice of another, using my father’s words. But he is nowhere here inside me, So I go to where I know he was. I go into the mountain where the body of my father lay To stand amid the exploding instant of his death. Suffusing his spirit’s home with my own spirit, To dream beneath the mountain wall and sky, Carrying back more than the metal of his shattered coffin. II Guardian of your father’s mountain I watch you strive to conquer that jagged peak where you seek who knows exactly what—some real touch with your physical infant beginnings, some knowledge, some truth. I watch you once, twice, try but fail to stand at that high granite ledge where he fell and was consumed by sacred heat, melted with the ancient geology. I will watch you again struggle to make your connection. From the love in my heart come these whispering words: You do not have to hurl yourself against that hard mountainside-You are whole and free to soar, released by the final momentary blessings of your father whose life spills into yours forever. Deborah Hailey, a retired librarian, lives in downtown Boulder, with her cat, Crunchy.
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FEBRUARY 24, 2022
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BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE