Where Mountain Lion Lay Down with Deer

by Leslie Marmon Silko

Leslie Marmon Silko

I climb the black rock mountain
Stepping from day to day,
Silently
I smell the wind for my ancestors
Pale blue leaves
Crushed with mountain smell
Returning
Up the gray stone cliff
Where I descended
A thousand years ago
Returning to faded black stone
Where mountain lion lay down with deer
It is better to stay up here
Watching wind’s reflection
It tall yellow flowers
The old one who remember me are gone
The old songs are forgotten
And the story of my birth.
How I danced in snow-frost moonlight
distant stars to the end of the Earth,
How I swam away
In freezing mountain water
narrow mossy canyon tumbling down
out of the mountain
out of deep canyon stone down
the memory spilling out into the world.





Last updated December 05, 2022