Santa Fe Plaza

The men walk as if through the Arch of Constantine

straighten 

pierce everything, nothing

riding their legs like chariots they straighten and pierce,

conquistadors of the beaten path, of everything, nothing,

clearing the unwild in saddle-soaped boots

The women swish and pause as if their denim were flamenco skirts, swish and

pause, intuit the tempo from their dance partners admiring the bejeweled

portal, swish and pause, they demure at Puebloan knees, Navajo hemlines, swish

and pause, to the beat of reverential disinterest

Home Editing

Kill your darlings is one of the writing terms which has become a mantra to me over the last year of homemaking.

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Inventory

Some days, the museum smells like the selection of rawhide bones in a pet store, not rotten but paused in a stage of decomposition ideal for shelving and inventory.  Some days, the air is foul and new specimens can be tasted the way saltwater air belies the ocean long before it is seen.  Today, the doors open wide for bones on grey carts, then bones on grey carts, and the museum smells only like sand blown in from the mesa.

Walk to Chimayo

We trod to Chimayo on earth the color of sunburned flesh that refuses then fuses with the sky.  The horizon is as blue and bent as an egg.   The feet we follow swing outward in long, regular strides; sand crunches in time with the strumming of his guitar.  The song is neither joyful nor mournful but simply requests from the hills: El Señor, El Señor.