Once in The
West
From the top of Monte Luna you
can see the top of Monte Sol
and - rolling out to the horizon
- the huge ancient geology
of north central New Mexico.
The human things down there -
Santa Fe highways, powerlines,
billboards, buildings -
look like a simple rash on an
otherwise perfect old skin.
I'm stretched out up here on
a large flat rock slanted
a bit down and out towards space,
the air empty between here and
the rough base of boulders,
chamiso, and pinon pine.
I could roll off.
The sun is sleepy warm,
I'm alone in thin air nine thousand
feet up from some sea.
I could roll off.
It was a tough walk up because
I'm out of shape
and it's too soon for me
to breath easily at this altitude
- barely here a week.
It was a tough walk and a confusing
one.
In these hills you start up
one incline
and find yourself down in a
ravine
having to climb twice as high
again
to get back to level -
a weird land
that seems to defy the norms
of flatland physics.
The hot blue sky has tiny black
bugs in it -
birds large enough to scare
me
if they landed.
I try to imagine the planet
whirling me now.
Nothing out there but blue,
then black.
Down here there's rock.
I turn on my stomach, push my
cheek to the stone,
and lick it.
My mother gasps.
We learned early not to eat
dirt,
to keep the earth at a distance,
underfoot.
Here there's nothing cleaner
or more full of grace.
Mom's out of sight,
back in her nice house on a
little man-made lake -
Tom's on the mountaintop,
licking rock and
rolling through crazy blue light.
1996
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