THINGS THAT BEAR WATCHING
(Nightfall, Rio Grande Gorge, July 1996)

It grows chalky and grey, the colour of lapsed coffee,
then slate, charcoal, inky, later,
and only the disposition of bridge shelves
crisscrossing the well scalped out of the dark Rio
below, daydream white, to guide the headlights of cars
unused to night passing on 64 to Chama, and faraway west, beyond,
over the water,- that, and the filmy sight of some loco coyote
or marmot, the evening and Daystar, satellite winking in retrograde
grooved to its black elliptical track, and always,
the vagrant eyes of the poor come in from the fields
shining across the splayed array of johnnystones, thistled grasses of mesa,
into the last things of this world that bear watching.

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PUEBLO BLUE

Two women, midwinter,
seraped, hooded, whitebooted,
looking past the blue pueblo,
through the blue trees,
beyond the iceblue stars
crowding the nightblue sky
called, by some, el cielo,
for the poor people of this earth

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THE GARDEN

Across the articulate field and acequia
sheltered by mountain, charmed by moon,
nothing but piles of late afternoon light
and the reaping of wheat and bluecorn rent hands
have gathered up, bundled into great tiered bales
bound tightly with wire, sun and stuck
to their dark faces and forearms, dark corded hair,
pitched like prayers in their bones,
fastfallen over and around them and the fruit
of their most perfect work
in the afterglow of the garden,
the end of day.