and people would say “like father like son” “blood is thicker than      water”—
let them instead wonder how all that woundedness

turned into something so miraculous like the stone
draperies, parachutes and gothic palaces sculpted

invisibly in dark chambers deep inside sacred caves
secret places where spelunking warriors with torches

of twisted creosote dragged their dead
into the farthest narrowing corner of the underworld

crawling on red bellies abraded by green limestone
coming out into daylight

with thousands of years of relations like dust
in their hair, generations of stories repeated by the wind

singing in their eyes and whispering from their every step
and though I did not have the ears to hear

I somehow understood even then you can take the girl
out of Indiana but you can't take Indiana out of the girl

Over the years, I have learned to commit in faith that Spirit lives
in bristlecone and hemp, coyote and hare,

that there is God in the gopher and God in the gopher snake,
God in the ground squirrel and God in the hawk

and I realize, mother, though you brought God with you
into this desert you couldn't bring along the whole Church

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