Seeing in the True Light
Making it is glazing a pot with running stars.Success in this private congress
is natural as the pomegranate, fallen
heart up, dying in the road; the fence
that blows toward invisibility at dusk,
posts choked by red and black paisley bandanas.Crickets slowly count out the temperature--
part of the trade we make with time.We lease our towers to light and singing,
beneath dark ladders
to be part of the sun's golden dancers.Lights shine over the stockyards,
empty corrals--
vaqueros in black chaps are
dead and gone. Moths turn,
windmills of small wings,
losing altitude.Indians took the last Appaloosas
to Wind River, maybe, or Gilt Edge, Montana;
leaving half-moons of horseshoes in the sand,
shreds of blankets bleeding from mesquite.
Copyright © Ramón E. Martinez, 1999. All Rights Reserved.