Musings and a poem: Desert Water Wars

Jack wrote this in February, 2006:

Good evening blogsters.
Lessssseee.

Ah.  Ate lunch over at San Felipe Pueblo again today.  Got to watch a bit of TV while I ate.  Sound was turned off, but it was still middling interesting watching it.

Saw a fat guy in a cowboy hat apparently trying to decide whether he could get his mouth around a microphone to suck it.  Took him a while to decide not to do it.

Saw a movie must have been a piece of a Tarzan flick.  Two white guys shaving in a river using a cut-throat razor with apes doing what apes do in the background.  An occasional noble savage running through the jungle, bad white guys in a boat shooting black tigers, crocodiles and this and that.  Didn’t see Jane around.

Middling interesting.  Especially that fat cowboy and the microphone.  Someone said his name was Barth somebody-or-other.  Crazy the things a person will do to get on TV.
Doggerel to smile by – Desert Water Wars

 

Flooding on the Zuni land

Tribal chairman calls

Upstream Ramah Din’e band

Over grazing galls

 

Ancient ruins I travel past

Forgotten tribes of old

And finally arrive at last

On Zuni land as told:

 

Tribal council meets, he chants

A time warp history

I listen long the raves and rants

And river mystery

 

“Navajo must have his sheep

To have his wealth, it’s plain.

Too many kids, too many sheep

Too little grass and rain.”

 

Forgotten white man wrongs and deeds

The raids of Navajo

Corn that didn’t sprout the seeds

And stumbled Shalako

 

“More sheep graze than in the past

Arroyos grew wide and deep

Siltation settled hard and fast

In riverbed to sleep.”

 

Navajo siltation choked

An ancient channel bed

Water rose above the banks

200 cattle dead

 

“Houses flooded, ruined cars

Fields of grain were lost

A playground field a channel mars

And who should bear the cost?”

 

The Chapter Prez of Ramah band

Listened to my tale

Stony silence, steady hand

Informed me I would fail

 

“If those Zunis don’t like floods

Tell them to reduce the chances;

We’ll hold back our streams of muds

If they’ll call off their damned rain dances”