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II. Rio Penasco

Still within hearing of the highway

community becomes a gift

like separation is in town.

No one to see: vacant

tents in view; only

birds, wind, trucks

in sound of my playhouse. Others

left to yank fish

out of their slim lives.

Birds make peals that mean

delight in my ears -

that may name alarm

in theirs, or tell whether

those clouds haul water.

Meaning to go further in

past this meeting place

even the hardy recognized

how rare oval spaces

have become, that hold human

sparks exactly far and near

enough to keep a fire.

Because of afternoon I am allowed

another look by other light.

Behind them it shows their multiplicity

of needles and leaves, when at morning

those trees were massy green; the uprights,

now stark supports triangulating

deep spaces, lay in delicate lines

that barely hinted rootedness.

III. Walk: Rio Bonito

Gazing up through fir

branches at noon sun inspired

baubles for Yule boughs.

IV. After the Half Century

The ones that catch my eye look

like stubbornness in motion. Think of obstinate old

grubstakers in goldfields, eyes raking all

sides of any path,

families in storage. Imagine the angry

eldest offspring somewhere holding the fort with

forgotten spouses, while these mules trudged

squinting into all the glitter

of sun and rock for one gleam

of the real, granting short answers to distraction; they

didn't need sidekicks till their knees gave out. You're

late for that irascible

lone errantry, but you'd be a standout

holdout, my kind of gambler: intransigent after

the pure vein, risking the next range

and another year of promise.

V. Chiricahua

Stone. And all

that air, sun, stone,

water and bone ferment.

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