from Walt Whitman Strides the Llano of New Mexico
I fell asleep in your love and woke to my mother's
toritillas on the comal, my father's cough, my
familia's way to work, the vast love which was
an ocean in a small house.
I woke to write my Leaves of Grass, the cuentos
of the llano, tierra sagrada! I thank the wise
teach who said, "Dark child, read this book!"
You are grass and to grass you shall return."
From Letter From Kathmandu
Let us leave our security,
open our memory, bring flowers
from the storm, write letters that become
sanctuaries, so that we ourselves
may become sanctuaries.
From Pena Blanca
But here all is naked earth. Cottonwoods suck
The bare earth-breast by walls and roofs of clay
Along dirt roads to sandy quilts that tuck
The dead in silt-screened beds. You hear them say:
"We are at home. To earthen walls our eyes
First opened, closed and opened night and morn,
And closed on them for good. Here each one lies
Like buried seed of cottonwood or corn,
Adobe-bred and born, re-wombed in earth,
To wait for what we dreamed, a greener birth."
From The Poet and the Wind
And just when it looked like the poet was winning
the wind began to gather and started spinning
and knocked that poet blind
because the wind is a warrior
just as old as time.
It hit the poet so hard
it blew the poet’s mind.
So he started reaching for metaphor
and searching for simile
digging deep inside himself
looking for the capability
of seeing beauty in everything.
From Landscape with Ordinary Things
Last night, behind the caves of burning wood
in the beehive-shaped fireplace, I could see
into the cracked mud, past the honeycomb lath
of chicken wire—to the adobe bricks
of its construction. How quickly fire turns
one thing into another—nothing’s ever destroyed—
ashes to soil to wood and back to flame.
From San Antonio Mountain
high on mountain shoulder
up to my eyes in yellow
he brought me tobacco
and called me out to be the deer
fresh shit still shines behind the grove
soft marks in dirt where large animals
have lain
From She Looks Toward the Forest for a Formation and I See an Orchestra Playing
ease my way to the far side of the opal and lie above the ants, next to the roses,
wisdom in their creases, brightness in their pigment. The ensuing, though not
of armor, a stone of diamond as well as quill. Fish emerge from black holes
so that one wonders what is in them; or a wolf watches you through the window
with patience on the flagstone among roses , or the moon is so large it seems
only seventy miles away, once you make it to the secret beach in broad daylight.
From Burning River
I will tell my son over and over again,
"Do not let the rivers burn."
Mountains must stand
until winds and rains come,
and they -- and only they --
will cause them to sink
back into the center
of that universal river
which is their's
and their children's,
Magpie, Bear, and Coyote too.
I will tell him over and over
and over again.
From Me of Me
My face carries my weight
like a prayer nailed
half-mast to a flagpole.
From Map Songs of the Sandhill Cranes
in Mexico
they laid open the maps again
written for them in the 2nd world
in blue light spoken with blue voices
they learned songs that would guide them through all the worlds to come
songs they placed in the spiral of their throats and called them maps
in the blue world they danced with Wind
who liked these feathered beings
so Wind molded and formed their bodies
and taught them to ride on its breath
when the fights and quarrels broke the blue world apart
the cranes gathered their songs and dances and maps
and flew towards the stars
turned their bodies and broke
through a hole in the sky
into the Glittering World
from Ancestor
Papa gave us something: when we paused from work,
my sister fourteen years old working the cotton fields,
my brother and I running like deer,
we would pause, because we had a papa no one could catch,
who spoke when he spoke and bragged and drank,
he bragged about us: he did not say we were smart,
nor did he say we were strong and were going to be rich someday.
He said we were good. He held us up to the world for it to see,
three children that were good, who understood love in a quiet way,
who owned nothing but calloused hands and true freedom,
and that is how he made us: he offered us to the wind,
to the mountains, to the skies of autumn and spring.
He said, “Here are my children! Care for them!”
And he left again, going somewhere like a child
with a warrior´s heart, nothing could stop him.
from Weariness
There is a dear weariness of love...
Hand relaxed in hand,
Shoulder at rest upon shoulder.
And to me that pool of weariness is more wonderful
Than crater, cataract,
Maelstrom, earthquake...
From Morning on Tseregé
When I was a child I climbed here
at sunrise, barefooted among the grasses.
I searched for arrowheads among the ruins
and stood wondering on the rims of the broken kivas.
I had no language to say what it was that moved me,
a wisdom of rocks and old trees, of buried rivers,
of the great arcs and tangents of sky and mountain
From A Familiar Word
I do. I do love my
family, my daughter of onyx,
husband cut from natural light,
my slim brothers like twin fists
who were my first children,
and then the mother
martyr my misty-eyed
foe and friend
and you father
suspended like a lie
an accoutrement to the pithy life
that bore my name
From Something Like Marriage
I’m engaged to New Mexico. I’ve been engaged for 18 years.
I’ve worn its ring of rainbow set with a mica shard. I’ve
given my dowry already, my skin texture, my hair moisture.
I’ve given New Mexico my back-East manners, my
eyesight, the arches of my feet. New Mexico’s a difficult
fiance. I learned the word chamisa, and the plant takes an
alias, I plant trees for it, carry water to them.
From The Reliquaries
How it comes forth: the story.
Wanting it, carving it down to vision.
Architecture, a coliseum of bent light,
the beautiful scatter of broken stones.
(And I can turn it into stones.)
Love, love: a portico, a labyrinth.
From Prayer for Words
My voice restore for me.
Navajo
Here is the wind bending the reeds westward,
The patchwork of morning on gray moraine:
Had I words I could tell of origin,
Of God’s hands bloody with birth at first light,
Of my thin squeals in the heat of his breath,
Of the taste of being, the bitterness,
And scents of camas root and chokecherries.
From In Each Paper Cell
emptiness
gray light chambered
symmetry that astounded
The firs breathed overhead
As a girl I’d overheard stories
of sting and nest
how I could take weightlessness
in my hands and understand a swarm
From Traversal
The day has the tensile strength of silk:
you card the hours, spin them, dip
the skeins in a dye pot, and grief or anger,
pleasure or elation’s the mordant that fixes
the hue. You find yourself stepping
through a T-shaped doorway: the niches
in a circular ruin mark the sun’s motion
From She Says
The cool October night, and his tall gray hat
throws sharp shadows on the ground.
Somewhere west of the black volcanoes,
dogs are barking at something no one else can see.
His voice a white cloud,
plumes of chimney smoke suspended in the dark.
Later we are dancing in the living room,
his hand warm on the small of my back.
It is music that doesn’t change.
From When Love Gets Home
Love does not
always reach
its desired
destination
sometimes
it crosses
lines
between nations
between people
sometimes
it leaves
with a hollow
in its wake
and sometimes
it can’t leave
From Playback
Every Sunday all over the country,
apologies gather. When I’m not in this
small cottage, unreacting, I cascade sound
and a few sentences from a cramped
room to whoever will listen. I know some
people think it is sinful to love such temptations,
but I stay with my face soft against
microphone, announcing my moral
directions. Sometimes, I’m convinced my blood
needs all those crossings.
From The Failed Spring
That we have chosen to call the group of eggs
a clutch. That the brittle remnants
of the oak’s leaves, singed by frost, are being replaced
by tiny replicas sprouting like the hands
of the thalidomide boy you once watched
bowling with his feet. And how we love this
chance at recovery, this overcoming, this triumph
of the spirit, this . . . what?
From Remember
Remember the sky that you were born under,
know each of the star's stories.
Remember the moon, know who she is.
Remember the sun's birth at dawn, that is the
strongest point of time. Remember sundown
and the giving away to night.
From Muy Vieja Mexicana
I've seen her pass with eyes upon the road --
An old bent woman in a bronze-black shawl,
With skin as dried and wrinkled as a mummy's,
As brown as a cigar-box, and her voice
Like the low vibrant strings of a guitar.
And I have fancied from the girls about
What she was at their age, what they will be
When they are old as she. But now she sits
And smokes away each night till dawn comes round,
Thinking, beside the pinyons' flame, of days
Long past and gone, when she was young -- content
To be no longer young, her epic done:
For a woman has work and much to do,
And it's good at the last to know it's through,
And still have time to sit alone,
To have some time you can call your own.
From The Poet
I take what never can be taken,
Touch what cannot be;
I wake what never could awaken,
But for me.
From Daily Special
Have you heard the blown rain on top of rain fly,
the lazy sighing of Aspen and Pine in the late May breeze,
the still, methodical rushing of river water running down?
Have you seen the threesome of chipmunks scurry over brush,
loose volcanic tuft,
and raven scat?
Have you seen the full moon streak the cloudy sky
and watch the grey undefined cirrus clouds move in
and paint the sky a shade of slate?
Have you heard birds or seen words swooping overhead?
From Cosas de Mujeres
The voice that sings of revolution
belongs to my favorite dance partner,
the best cumbero in Oaxaca.
Fridays we drink coffee together under a spiny
tree at the mercado orgánico.
Thursday nights he sings Mercedes Sosa, Victor
Jara, Daniel Viglietti, recites Neruda,
Sabines, Bukowski.
“He’s not attractive, but
he kind of grows on you,
and then he becomes
more attractive
the more you talk to him.”
She drinks Pacífico.
I drink mescal.
From Woodstove of My Childhood