IN THE SAN GERONIMO VALLEY (see Reese River Valley)

IN THE SAN GERONIMO VALLEY
      —to Dan Propper

In the San Geronimo Valley 
where my grandmother lives,
a, tree is growing out of a cleft in the rock.   
When I was a kid, I  remember 
the adults talking politics and smoking cigars.
The kitchen table jumped with empty whiskey glasses
as their fists punctuated each sentence.
There are no more Indians in San Geronimo Valley. 
My brother is part Cherokee. 
His great-grandmother sat wrinkled on a porch 
under the fierce Nevada sun.My grandmother spent summers
riding across mesquite covered valleys.
She never met the Cherokee woman
whose native blood sculpted my brother's face
into the  sane proud shape of arroyos.
His high cheekbones frame flashing black eyes
darker than my owm Black-Irish look.
Our fathers never met, 
yet they loved the same woman
who bore us willingly,
but it was my grandmother who raised us.
Sometimes she talks about Nevada,
and Home  Ranch where her uncle Paddy
was thrown and killed by a horse.
His wife stood on the porch,
her mouth a silent, white 0
as the foreman lifted his rifle 
to the forehead of the cowpony
and the Nevada wind howled through the open door.
In the Valley, where Geronimo once rode,
the tree thrusts its roots deeper into the rock.
The fracture widens imperceptibly
as roots swell from the Autumn rains.
I have never told my grandmother I love her.
 
date? added 10.16
on paper dated 0ct. 12, 81.
See REESE RIVER VALLEY
HOME RANCH  4/85