The first morning, I had three ravens on the deck rail, raucous messengers arguing against my existence. But a barista in Angel Fire making me a chai tea, complimented my hat and I felt like I’d been kissed: an old man enthralled by the young, freed from the mockery of birds.
II.
Sunrise on the mountain— hummingbirds arrive early to check their cache of liquid ruby and begin their daylong wars. It’s so still you can hear the flutter of the nuthatch wings, darting down to the offered seed. Birdsong from jays, grosbeaks, and finches rises as the sun hits the distant peaks.
Late afternoons I listen to the loveless sound of wind through the mountain pines.
Silence falls like an axe on the neck of day, leaving behind a azure glow that bleeds into darkness.
Bats fly like black stars beneath the panopticon of the night sky.
III.
A crescent moon above the ridge in a blue sky washed in darkness. The archaic stars promise asylum but tomorrow I leave the mountains to return to highways and cities that vow only endlessness.
Notes from a Cabin in Eagle Nest, NM
I.
The first morning, I had three ravens
on the deck rail. Then a barista in Angel Fire
made me a chai tea latte, complimented
my hat and I felt like I’d been kissed:
an old man enthralled by the young.
II.
Sunrise on the mountain
hummingbirds arrive first
to check their ruby colored stash
and begin their daylong wars
then birdsong as the sun hits the first peaks.
Now a bluejay checks the spread
of seeds across deck railing but flies away.
It’s so still you can hear
the flutter of the nuthatch wings,
first to dare the rail this morning.
Evenings I counted the lonely sound
of late afternoon wind
through the mountainside trees.
Bats flew like black stars across
the face of the sky at sunset.
III.
My last night, a crescent moon
above the ridge in a blue sky
washed in darkness. From the mountaintop,
the stars do seem the handiwork of gods.
I drove 500 miles that first day
from the hills of South Texas to the Comanche plains of the Panhandle
lodged in a dismal beaten down hotel room
Bhagavad Gita along with Bible in bedside drawer
ate terrible Thai food
shot out of there like a cannon shell
at dawn next morning
through the Kiowa grasslands, gentle sea of grass
into New Mexico and loneliness
like an escaped outlaw.
But outlaws are confused by freedom
like the shepherd puppy
who met me at the cabin
with barks and jumps and uncertainty
as I settled into my Sangre de Christo hideout.
The first morning, I had three ravens on the deck rail.
Joe Romero brought water for our cistern,
ran a body shop in Albuquerque for 25 years
with the build and the tattoos to prove it,
native Los Lunan with the blue eyes of the Spanish conquerors.
Next morning a barista in Angel Fire
made me a chai tea latte, complimented
my hat and I felt like I’d been kissed:
just an old man enthralled by the young.
The lonely sound of late afternoon wind through the mountainside trees,
all the angels live in the valley below.
A good third day, but a reckoning had to come.
Inside the cabin, after sunset,
I am besieged by a hundred triggers, ghosts of the hundred nights we spent here over 40 years.
I’m alone, our son is gone, everthing about this is wrong.
Bats at sunset
dog howls at night jet overhead
some kind of june bug drives me in from the porch.
Buying cigarettes, found myself
listening to motorcycle casualty C——
stocky, mohawked,
“I knew you were from Central Texas
I used to love to ride those hills
wrecked, split my helmet, brain surgery
but I’m doing better now”
a cook in the Eagle Nest corner store,
an angel of injury.
Sasha arrives
“normalizing catastrophe”:
imagining the worst and planning for it,
she talks non-stop: tells me how drafted serfs
in Tsarist times
19 or 20,
attended their own funerals before leaving.
Drafted for 25 years.
Average lifespan was 32.
Another kind of angel in Angel Fire,
a boy angel, plump as a cherubim
who shared the story of his technicolor tattooes
as he checked our groceries.
Sunrise on the mountain
hummingbirds arrive first
to check their ruby colored stash
and begin their daylong wars
then birdsongs as sun hits first peaks.
Now a bluejay checks the spread of seeds across deck railing but flys away.
so still you can hear the flutter of the nuthatch wings, first to dare the rail.
In the heat of the afternoons
we read,
Sasha about Civil War Reconstruction
while I voyage with Ginsberg in his journals from ‘66.
My sixth day on the mountain,
already dreaming of return
from here to desert Albuquerque
to send Sasha back to the Black Hills
from there to flatland Lubbock then south toward home.
My last night,
a crescent moon above the ridge in a blue sky
washed in darkness.
From the mountaintop, the stars do seem the handiwork of gods.
