Road to Chimayo

  

I’d been to Chimayo before.  But it was never a spiritual experience until I read the poem “Tamales and Dirt” by Nathan Brown.  So a couple of years ago, on a perfect July afternoon, as the monsoon clouds were bubbling up over the Rio Grande valley, I drove up there with my daughter.  This poem was inspired on that drive.    

 

ROAD TO CHIMAYO

There are no straight lines here, 
no human lines
to diminish Earth’s curves of sandstone sculpted. 
And the spindly ashen skeletons of dead cholla,
more beautiful than driftwood.          

There are no straight lines here

save the occasional barbed wire fence. 
And the black on white geometry
on broken bits of ancient pottery,
lying next to rusty beer cans,
as if they were discarded at the same time. 

There is no clock time here,

no human time. 
Only Earth’s time of the slow march of a river,
reducing the Sangre de Cristo’s a grain of sand at a time. 
Into cataract water
carving new cut banks when the snows melt. 
Receding into dusty beds
to sleep again until spring. 

Every year is a grain of sand. 

And when the mountain is gone
things are just getting started.


(forthcoming in Red Earth Review)