Betty's window frames are the color of the sky
Lucia starts each morning with a cigarette
The sun weaves patterns through the vigas,
the bars in the adobe walls
imprisoned sunlight
the leaves of the cottonwood
elaborate on the small breeze
and cast long slanted shadows
on the wall
Mayflies dance vertical spirals
in endless progression
like an elevated vertical infinity sign
Maybe it's because they don't live so long
they make the sign
Cathedrals of light spewer from the steeple
a sign of light flooding the room, the walls
Beyond the cottonwoods
a garden of cosmos alizarin godetias and cornflowers
Someone has just laid a lawn squares of a living
carpet
the mayflies dance above it
The window in the wall with its vigas
casts ladders of light across the patio floor
and
onto the lawn
a bridge into another world
This morning I awoke in a strange house
made tea, but drank coffee instead
that familiar slow ponderous crunch
of Betty's foot
on the gravel
an old woman who spends her final days
in this house her
parents built
soon she will move to a fine new apartment on the
Santa Fe river
The house is getting to be too much for her, she
says.
The infrequent rain has stained the wall
with heiroglyphic code.
There is no water in the Santa Fe river
This is the end of the trail that leads to Mexico City
the mute clarion announces Sunday
Yes, today the sun also rises (to borrow a line)
I held a Pueblo pipe stem in my hand at midnight
No bowl, but as I made the proper pass from right to
left arm
I felt the medicine anyway
A tuft of coarse strawberry hair—a scalp?
We introduced the notion of scalping our enemies
Who was more savage?
The names speak for themselves
Kit Carson, Billy the Kid, Pancho Villa
They all rode into town one way or another
We arrived in a white ford with the latest
technology
computerized excess
When the shadows of the cottonwood leaves
fall on the ground, they make circular patterns
like cluster of people
Teenagers line the plaza last night in tight knots
the light intersects shadow on the peach
This is like arriving next door to home 333 on an
aqua door
I used to live at 333 Third Ave
My life dominated by the second prime number
or third of you count zero
Is zero a prime number or is it transparent like
water,
like sly only giving the appearance of un
divisibility
A cat wanders along a high wall the watertower on
stilts
peers over a neighbor's fence into their private
refuges
We are always seeking refuge.
Lucia and Betty talk on the island of bed amid boxes
We are four women in transition
young Michael, the only balance
Soon we will need to plan our days here, so little
time
Words to know: Bering Straits
civilization, Ice age mountains
boulders migration, mammoths, obsidian
stone age mica surplus specialize cahokia
an endless progression of shops up canyon road
one gallery after another in all the same hues
art for sale in cloying pastels
the written word
should be clean and bare
clear as light
firm as stone
two word are not
as good as one
—anon
Two blocks from this palace where I sleep
where Delgado crosses the Santa Fe River
is where the Rosenbergs were arrested says Lee
Rosenthal
Tomorrow we go to Los Alamos
the cottonwoods where the Manhattan Project was born
I am chasing my own ancestors across New Mexico
Last night we had rain, today the cottonwood leaves
have that preternatural rustle of fall in the air
a state of being
The peaches are gone from the windowsill
I miss
their elegancy against the cerulean sashes
I've bought Betty nectarines as replacements
though I know it won't look the same
Today we go to
the pueblos
They say rainbows signify hope
over Frijoles Canyon
Clouds dressed in salmon hues
four corners for rainbows
lightning striking the earth
9/1990 (not sure why I put 1991 as Hotel La Flnda, Taos is 1990)
