Evening Comes in a Hurry
To Nikki Evening comes in a hurry Or not at all as I ache for dawn No dreams No awakening Black orchards of sleep Instead of making copies of Your death certificate I would rather be riding a gentle horse Through the waning yellow day With you With you Smiling flowers Breathing stars of eyes shining Your grace in the ether Your place in the other unknown You left a hole no ocean Or green mountains can fill Yet you bring me rose stones and pink shells Gathered between Floods of tears Sweet slices of orange I am told I must be kind To myself As my grief devours the sun.
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Low Down in the High Desert
Geese ruckus Down on the river Grief moon one night past full Hangs on bare limbs Night smells of sage Night of blue stars and Restless headlights of A pick-up on Main Street Gravel under tires Grinding, hissing into silence Broken radios Quail sleeping under the stables Disheveled sky of dying winter I step outside Unsure of my footing and Ready to fall The cold wind never saying “Stop” Just asking “Is this really The path you want to follow?”
Sunup Through the blurry window of morning eyes A sky on fire over the Sangres, Rose wisps crowning the Canjilons, Headlights below Mesa del Yeso Like earthbound satellites drift Toward unseen Cebolla and Tierra Amarilla, Silver sheen from the basin below An eerie glow off the unnatural lake, And to the south the charcoal silhouette Of the stern yet giving mother mountain Pedernal, watching over all. All the fading lights of her children villages Abiquiú, Youngsville, Cañones, Coyote… Where days begin with promise and with worry With piñon smoke and green chile Fresh tortillas and sopapillas Folksong, liturgy, and ancient rite First light on adobe churches in dusty plazas Broken walls of abandoned pueblos Ghost corrals of ghost horses Cottonwoods from which rustlers were hanged Now luminous skeletons themselves Stripped bare by the austere autumn wind. When the sun finally tracks me, I am listening To the lowing of distant cattle and The twittering of scrub jays in the juniper, The whispers of rabbits in the rabbitbrush And the creaking of my own grateful bones Warming to the business of a new day In the Valley of Shining Stone. Ghost Ranch Astride my proud mount, Camino, we ride Through the forms of earth at Ghost Ranch Subject of Georgia’s paintings long ago Iconic landscapes and shapes still visible-- The rolling red hills, a lone dead juniper The formation called El Puerto del Cielo Entrada layers of orange, white, and yellow Quirky hues shifting under the mischievous New Mexican late-autumn sun. Across the shimmering llano The mountain heart Cerro Pedernal Sacred to the Tewa who call it Tsee p’in And to the Navajo and the Jicarilla Apache La cuchilla of the Jemez Range Destination for thousands of years To roaming bands and settled tribes Who prized the chalcedony and chert Found in its slopes, Prime stone for arrows and spears. Georgia claimed it for her own and Had her ashes scattered there. With a slow hypnotic gait, we traverse The gauzy sands swirling In the juniper-laced afternoon wind, We descend craggy crumbling arroyos Sure-footed Camino and I Gently reining him in as he trots Up the other side, thinking maybe to gallop Thinking maybe to fly Up past El Rancho de los Brujos Beyond the sacred flint mountain And through the gate of heaven. La Plaza Blanca You could see it from Her house in Abiquiú Across the Rio Chama Georgia’s skull-white Landscape muse It’s owned now by a mosque Dar al Islam That grants us heathens And pilgrims of Other Respectful access To this pallid sanctum Of tuneful wind Raven song ringing beyond Chalky hoodoos and Along milky ledges Pastel creek beds That seem to run More ways than One Then silence Then song again Then wind Then none With the ghost of Georgia and The hosts of Muhammed We’re tracking a shadowy past Slipping through Crescent fences Of barbwire and bone Pondering strange exhibits Of black stones on this ashen canvas Stretching beyond time This sun-bleached forever Is quite hard to find There are no signs And the address in the local guide Is 1234 Fictitious Lane. Slow Road West Slow road west from Española Classic cars, fins and whitewalls, Rumbling behind Sleek new high-tech low-riders Grumbling past ramshackle adobe Crumbling walls and old houses Cords of piñon smoke twisting Up orange cliffs to The azure infinity Of November sky. (c) Eric Walter 2019
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