Scattered in the Snow

An early darkness
turns the house to memory
of people not there

I think of water
of a tide filling a mouth
old buildings in mist

Friends on a river
bearing cold rain in low water
a lifetime away

As a snowstorm drives waves of slanted flakes into the sage sea, I think of my frequent visits over the past year to Kit Carson Park in the center of Taos. It is where I watched and felt the seasons change, in the grass and trees, the sky and air, and the people. I'm going back through a tablet I've recently completed. Now, in full winter, is a good time to look back at what was present then, and what was anticipated (this).

10/22/08 4:15pm
I'm in the park again, here because I'm impatient. My ass is on the cold grass, no longer all green, but a mix of straw and still green blades. Children set up for soccer practice dressed in multicolored sweatshirts and hats. A coach in jeans and a black fleece, green and white ski cap and sneakers, has his hands in his pockets as he kicks the ball. It's around 40 degrees and the sky is overcast. A wind ruffles the thinning leaves, some still gold, most verging on rust. Other adults cross arms across chests or thrust hands in jacket pockets. There is no sun to ease the chill of 7000' elevation. We're naked to the cold. It will be 15 degrees tonight. I'm here. I'm here.

4/18/08
What do you say green blowfish? It's sunny and I'm barefoot on the grass of the park. The world is inviting, soft and fragrant. The wind tickles my toes and children squeak and grunt kicking soccer balls and fielding grounders. Winter yesterday. Spring Today. People inhabit the grass. Humans are out, moving and happy. The doors are open, the windows down. Cars drive by with crooked arms resting comfortably on the window's edge. Meat cooks somewhere in the neighborhood on the other side of the trees. A lone drummer beats in the glade to my north. A young Pueblo couple sits in the deeper grass under the Christmas tree blue spruce, elbows touching, hair mingling. Dark and dark. She looks leonine from here. The humans look relaxed, connected, moving as an organism. It can be this way even if NPR says the economy is bad, even if this country is at war, even though we are near Los Alamos. It can be this way and deep down the humans know it.

5/30/08
A frail, nibbling rabbit just broke my heart like a warm infant in my arms. Birds squeak in the trees in back of Cafe Tazza, reopened last week by friends, the sweetness of the backyard the same as when I moved here 5 years ago today. 5 full years of tumult and hurtling of hermitage and torpor of prayer and dashing of love and mourning. Earlier I was lamenting the loss of the magic and wonder I had 5 years ago. Where did it go? It felt irretrievable, but it's right here as I'm broken again, a soft breeze about my neck, jiggling plants at the edges, birds and crickets singing easy, no clouds to mar the blue, friendly clicker bugs hopping across my pages and the aspen across the road shimmering gold. Whaddyagonnado? It's a world of blue and bookstores and curvy women and ancient rumblings you can feel and don't need to discuss, of battered purple mountains with swervy snowfields melting into the dark creases, of pinon scented air filled with volcanic dirt and river bottom clay. It's too much to grasp, so I let go, again, and the magic returns.