End of the Millennium Way (after the Navajo)

In the year now dawning,
full of kindness may I walk.
With my eyes open to beauty may I walk.
With friends beside me may I walk,
and tell the constellations with our hands.

Mindful, will I make my way again.
Mindful, will I make my way
among the stones of fallen temples
laid out now meandering and lovely
ahead, through sage and red poppies,
as long contemplative paths.
Lovely quizzical paths. Paths looping
like question marks back on themselves. Or,
lovely too, a looped canoe sail petroglyph,
marking my way back, mindful, to the start.

On a road of wonder may I walk.
On a road of wonder, alive to every turning, may I walk.
With spirit dancing,
like the sun on water, joyful, may I walk.
Beside the bay of sea turtles,
barefoot and humbled by their wisdom, may I walk.

May I walk high above the sea
and in it, up to my knees.
May they acknowledge me, the sea turtles,
and swim around me easily.
May it be lucid and green there, where they are.
In the tracks of deer dancers
with pine bough antlers may I learn to dance.
May there be sunlight on the far hills, and
the light of stars at night in ancient canyons on old snow.
May Orpheus too come, and all the gods I learned
to call by name once in a distant starwashed place.

In this last year of a thousand, celebrating, may I walk.
May every step be celebration, telling
everything there is (there is so much!) to celebrate.
May I, stepping, sing. Exultate jubilate.

It is finished in beauty.
It is finished in beauty.
It is finished in beauty.


—Christie (January 1, 1999)