Delayza’s Necklace

We enter to sounds of bells.
The hall’s warmth evokes
an imprint of my small self
standing by my grandparents.
Their presence I sense
in drums and singers’ voices.

Collective breath of all colors
hovers above the leaping herd.
Eagle and hawk feathers adorn
the deer dance’s rhythmic scent—
forest evergreen, damp earth.

Delayza puts her hand in mine.
The seated crowd hinders her view.
I lift her above the masses—
a butterfly beyond reach.

Her irises bloom to the choir
and drumbeats rumbling
nearby snowflakes.

I set her among the gold straw flecks
glistening on the mud plastered floor.
Her body sways back and forth,
she stands on tiptoe
to see over the crowd.

A charcoal faced hunter
in camouflage shirt and jeans
trots towards the small child.
He places a coral bead necklace
over her head as she smiles
at her new delight.

Copyright © 2024 by Max Early. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on November 25, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets.

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“One of my first elicited childhood memories transpired while I opened the door of the dance hall. I was four years old when my grandparents took me to the winter Deer Dance in the village of Seama, New Mexico. I experienced a montage of wavering sound, sight, touch, and smell. The beauty of reminiscence intertwines with the process of encoding and recalling a memory. Delayza, through the eyes of a child, perceived and recorded her experience with a fleeting smile of amusement. This poem explores the impact of the narrator’s cherished past and creates the present moment of discovery for the girl. Her Deer Dance memory will linger into her adult mind, as it has in mine.”
—Max Early