Two clans

We are from different worlds though we sit side by side in this Flagstaff train station. We both wear blue sneakers and stare at our feet. Your skirt flounces against brown ankles. Your jaw details the canyons surrounding us and your eyes mirror snow clouds on the peaks of San Francisco. Rain has streamed down the talus of your face and stained in the features. I wonder about your people - Laguna, Hopi, Navajo? When you bend to accept a croissant and coffee I watch a woman remove papery blue piki from an adobe beehive oven. Our smiles shoot the horizon and pierce the cold high desert like sunblaze igniting the hair of the cholla. Your son who replaces railroad ties comes for you. I leave with a clan that reads the Kansas City Star all the way to Emporia.