Steep is the trail to the mesa above her—
Maid of the Zuñi-foik, tall and bare-armed;
Browned by the kiss of the warm winds that love her—
Maid whom the desert's breath never has harmed.
Strange is the view that is stretched far below her—
White sands that melt in a horizon blue;
Sea without waves, without sail, without rower—
Only the cloud-shadows ploughing it through.
So she has paused, in her bright-colored blanket,
And steadies the jar, while her breath rises fast,
At a niche in the trail, where the beetling cliffs flank it,
As her kindred have paused in the long ages past.