Stephen Sutherlin - Poet, Musician, Designer

Chaco, Chaco
Pueblo, pueblo
Solar and lunar
Casting shadow
Crossed perfect symmetry
Over generations
Passing down
Great calculations
To one day build
A night full of houses
That track the Sun
As it falls and rises
To follow the Moon
As it waxes and wanes
Over eighteen years
Of coming and goings
Houses full of empty rooms
For ghostly guests
Not even tombs
For no body rests
In the broken vessels
Of offerings made
To the ancestors travels
North to South
Down roads that unravel
After countless miles
Chaco, Chaco
Pueblo, pueblo
The presence of The Peoples
Persists through the morrows

I look up
Into the night sky
Looking back into
The history of the universe
This mystery I see
A thousand stars
And clouds of dust
Presented to me
From long, long ago
And just a fragment
Not even a whole
Arm of the galaxy
For it unfolds
Well beyond the sky
That sits on the horizon
Before my small eye
A dizzying array
In the dark, dark desert
This bright reminder
Of how dark and small
I am
On this ball of dust
And water
Spinning out into an eternity
Of history
With the possibility that
Empires are falling
Before my eyes like
Stars caught in the greater
Gravity of a singularity

Ignoble afternoon–
A beautiful day full
Of Unproductive adventure
A morning of attempts
Seen successful by
Others all around us
Empty handed we returned
To the road in search of
Vivacious waters
One last stop at
At the end of our journey–
–A great discovery
This riverbed full
Of our treasures
Great swimmers in abundance
And then great luck
A catch, a beauty
Long and strong, shimmering
With its rainbow skin
A triumph for the picture book
–Alas, against the rules
We had taken what we can’t keep
But greed made for bad decisions
And before I had enlightenment
The light went out of its eyes
There was death in the water
A waste of a noble creature
Now fish food — We must listen
To our children, their
Natural moral instincts
Are better than our
Ignoble age.