photo by Heidi Hopkins of her friend and mentor H. Nussbaumer

TO THINK OF HER IS TO LOSE ANY RIGHT TO COMPLAIN

Crowded cabin

Weary travelers 
Bumpin’ on frigid winds of the first cold front 
Blown over jagged peaks
Tumbling down to cool the warm prairie 
Burned out after a long week
Spending adrenaline 

An old woman tipped back

And wheeled into the window seat 
An ochre scarf coving her head
Like “the Afghan Girl”
But brown eyes not blue
One of Kerouac’s Mexican Fedayeen
With Tarahumara eyes
And crippled hands
From decades in the corn milpas
In a village quilted in corruption
And cartel butchery 
Turning skin to brown bark
Fractured like Copper Canyon 
Her fingers splayed
The roots of an upturned cottonwood

Running on empty

Spending then spent
On the mud bath of self-pity 
To think of her is to lose any right to complain

"Tortilla Maker"
Old Town
San Diego

 

Vines and Bark
Jacobson House
Norman, Oklahoma