I wish we could have rewound time and been other people. We could have been strangers having a drink in an airport bar, formed a friendship that lasted through relationships and kids. We could have been neighborhood kids who grew up together, suffered through parental rules and high school. Or maybe, just neighbors who watched out for each other, swapping stories and checking in while bringing in trash bins.
At the very least, perhaps we could have pretended to be other people for a time, for a week or two— erasing past foot prints, created new ones in some distant soil. All the while, we could have worn different faces. You could have chosen the mother’s face you’d have liked to have worn. And I could have chosen a daughter’s face that perhaps wasn’t some reminder of what you wanted to forget or ignore.
If we could have worn different faces, made new footprints in different places-- Perhaps our burdens of rage and loss and fear would have drifted away like runaway balloons at a child’s birthday party long before that day in July that haunts me still when I had to reach down to close your frightened eyes.
As I sit at my desk, I watch the does scale the stucco wall. Their leaps never fail to dazzle. Next, they stretch their necks to grab and eat the seed pods from the trees. Here, in the foothills of the Sandias, this sight wrings a sigh. Then I see him, outside the wall and to the left, watching the does. He is large but nearly hidden behind the tall Chamisa waving in the breeze. His head would be a prize to any hunter. His antlers tall and wide, many pointed. He steps away from the cover of the Chamisa. What I thought a waving branch— an arrow lodged in his left shoulder. He is the stag the neighbors have posted about— The one they say will eventually succumb to the wound. Reflexively, I rub my own left shoulder once frozen still from scar tissue until broken loose years ago by a medical procedure but now occasionally aches. How I wish I could help this buck. Remove the arrow, apply some healing balm, Let him recover here, feasting on seed pods, before sending him on his way only a scar to ache every once in a while.
Let me go
into the mountain’s depths
away from the light.
The sky holds nothing.
Neither does the sea.
Only the rock, the granite,
the depths of mountain
provides for me.
The mountain carries
me down and away,
away from this light,
protecting all it covers
as I cover myself
with my grandfather’s coal dust.
I will carry this canary
with me, if you think I must,
as I travel deeper,
ever deeper,
into the mountain.
As if you erupted from an eternal spring, an immortal thing, I gave you away when last I prayed here at Chimayo. When kneeling I scooped the healing dirt as I spoke silent prayers of thanks for my heart bravely facing shocks of resuscitation after years spent barely beating in stuttering grief.
Upon return today, I kneel to scoop the healing dirt, asking in silent prayer a blessing of forgiveness for giving you away too easily— thus, killing you, bleeding you of all hope, beyond resurrection, beyond resuscitation.
In the dirt of Chimayo, this healing earth, from this place of faith, sifted through my hands, I bury you, a mortal thing, I gave away too easily to an undeserving faith, in this dirt of Chimayo.
Each new year brings
Now this garden grief
Nourished by regret
Each year, this day, here—
Standing, kneeling, sitting—I
Spend tears, words, wishes
All meaningless now,
In the barren garden grief
Flowers never bloom
Seven years gone now--
Nothing roots, though it has tried,
In the garden grief inside
Consequences of time
Climb and mount
About the throat,
Following the path
Of arteries and veins,
And as if by magic,
Enter into the blood
To provide a dram bit
Of bitter choking poison
To the will of moving blood
That slows and stills
In the knowing.
Marshal forces
Of the earth, moon, orbits of planets,
Laws of time,
All we hold mighty and true,
Stop everything in its tracks,
Turn it all back
Before the start of any of it,
Falling away,
Marshaled from memory.
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