When I first came to this hidden place,
there were still citrus groves along Via Rancho;
lemon-scent’d air hung over blue lilac hills,
and those who grew up here talk of orchards
where now freeway & shopping mall
continue to encroach upon elfin forest. I could not
have endured the devastating sight of flowering oranges
bulldozed under for days on end in preparation for the parking pavilions.
          We don’t fight, we don’t scream-
          we rarely look up from our magazines..

The so-called end of the dry cycle this past year
has further eroded the land’s reprieve from development;
prickly pear & coyote gourd have overrun the disturbed soil
of the drought-abandoned country club/ golf course
(a resort in harmony with nature, the marketing ploy insists..)
& it has resurrected my buried soul to see this cactus fence
restore the scraped & raw land with waxy yellowrose blossoms this past spring.
          We don’t scream, we don’t fight-
          just fevered reading half the night..

Before the mall, before the orchards,
Many native plants here produce seeds,(I read in sweating bedsheets),
before the rails, before the tools even, were the fires;
that will only sprout when exposed to the high temperatures created
It was brown skin that lived in the valle these past hundreds of years-
Kumeyaay & descendants of ancient ones far south of here,
by extreme summer heat in combination with
and it will be brown-skin spirit that survives here long after the fiercest Santa Ana’s
have relentlessly burned these guarded acres of Yanqui commerce & investment..
uncontained, cyclical open-range conflagration.

..and arbutifolia once again covers this wounded land
from LaJolla to the San Gabriels,
to the high desert beyond.

I drove nearly a thousand miles
across three deserts
for our river ritual beneath the red moon;
across the quemado the Sunbird furied against time,
past ancient lava dunes sprouting
May’s verdescent splashes of sagebrush & snakeweed.
You circled above on a commuter flight
bound from Denver, floating
southerly along the contours of the Continental Divide;
& we arrived here at the middle of the world
like two errant crows riding
a thermal uplift of re-Union,
black wings shining high above the wide muddy at Cochiti.

The trailhead was marked solely
by a bank of river hawthorn,
a massing of soft rosado against dust-spattered, razor’d green.
Already it was an oppressively hot day
as we raced alongside the river
through thorny scrub & rustling cottonwoods
until we reached our sandy outpoint
in an exhilarated, expectant sweat.
Wading into the kneehigh, mudbrown eddy of swirling, warm water
white-skinn’d & awkward
like cattle egrets,
I followed your lead.
Reaching down into the current
& scooping up handfuls of the coppery silt, we
christened ourselves ‘a:ho’i
everliving
       ever-
             living in the all-Mother.

We eventually emerge from the stillwater
oozing redmud from arms, legs & fingerpainted faces-
our darkened torsos tingling as the mud dried
under the baking sun;
& we fell down in our adobe skins.
By midafternoon, the mesa-edg’d sky closing in
with turgid cumulus, the air thick
with both insects & approaching rain,
we traced out a circle with willow switches,
outlined it in pebbles & stones washed downstream
from the Sangre de Cristos
& laid down our feathers-
       Salve santos,
we chanted into the blue canyons;
Salve todos santos y espiritus afines.

The next morning we are wayfarers
in separate hotel lobbies,
business-clad, all remnants of mud &
sun & feather scrubbed
clean away by soap & shampoo,
leaving us lusterless & aching for the river again;
Twin Arrows Wandering
a pyramid city
in search of transformation & mud bodies
in the rush-hour maelstrom.

Grandview
we dust we dry day we chant the cloud away
we heat salt valley
ice & palisade-
we bract & blossom petal open
we sap the splendor bristlecone seedling
we shake the pine
we needle shine..

Grandview
we climb we cling & faultline old gold mine
we slag & slate tectonic plate-
we slope & scale the rock
the rusted rail,
we vein the quartz cave
we cascade..

Grandview
we track we black jackrabbit run
we mouse jump the nuthatches'
nightwatch-
we muledeer-notch the trail
we raven soar we quail
we coyote wail
this big pine tune..

Grandview
we loom we east sink deep soda spring
we sing strong the pronghorn
pinyon moon
we shadow long we shoshone song
we juniper skies
we jupiter rise..

Grandview
we pulse we radiate we comet contemplate
we spin & spark in darkness
arc the night
we split the summit white snow bright
we shoot the starry dolomite..
grand view,
we soul ignite!

South of the badlands & not far from the
coral-red dunes we came to sit amidst the redrock
where raven & quail are burnished
against unmoving air: smear
the red clay onto your face,
rub it deep into your pale skin
burning colorado on this cedar ledge under sun-dazed sky;
sit & become red, become clay..
let it seep slowly out of you,
the noise, the pain, the indifference-
sweat it out of your pores,
let it pour out in tears & in blood
as red & thick as this dust that now covers you,
grain by vermilion grain
ever settling, ever
around you..

Is there anything more comforting,
more familiar then,
than red sandstone,
ancient rock & sun?

This is my river place, western dreamscape
strewn with diamond sunlight
off Utah snow.