CHRISTMAS EYE AT WASHINGTON’S CROSSING
Omnia reliquit servare rempublicam
Society of the Cincinnati
Out on the freezing Delaware, ice sheets bob the surface, breaking
against granite pilings of the colonial river inn swept by winter storm.
Gusts of snow blow off a sandbar and sink in plunging currents
where a line of ducks paddles hard against the blizzard
as cornfields on the Jersey banks are whisked into bits
of stalks and broken sheaves spinning in the squalls.
This is where, one such Christmas night, the tall courtly general with bad teeth
risked his neck and his rebels to cross the storming river and rout the Hessians.
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What made them think they could succeed? … farmers mostly,
leaving homesteads to load cannon into Durham boats
to row into the snowstorm, then march all night to Trenton,
saving the Republic for Valley Forge and victory at Yorktown.
Before crossing, legend says, they assembled in the snow to hear
Paine’s new essay about summer soldiers and sunshine patriots.
What words could call us all together now? On what riverbank?
For what common good would we abandon all?
CIBOLERO
During this time Castillo saw, on the neck of an Indian, a little buckle
from a sword belt, and in it was sewed a horseshoe nail. He took it from
the Indian, and we asked what it was; they said it had come from Heaven.
We further asked who had brought it, and they answered that some men,
with beards like ours, had come from Heaven to that river; that they had
horses, lances and swords, and had lanced two of them.
The Journey of Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca (1542)
It’s 7:00 a.m. in Tecolote, New Mexico,
and the local news on cable
is going on about some woman high on dust
crashing into kids at a crossing. Meanwhile,
out on the edge of the high prairie,
up by I-25, the inmates are rising off
their roosts at San Miguel county jail
where the jail log reads like catechism:
Criminal Sexual Penetration in the first degree. Assault with
the intent to commit violent felony. False imprisonment.
Extortion. Unlawful taking of a motor vehicle. Conspiracy.
Burglary of a structure. Contributing to the delinquency
of a minor. Kidnapping. Conspiracy to commit Aggravated
Battery. Aggravated DWI (7th offense). Possession of
drug paraphernalia. Driving on suspended revoked license.
Probation Violation: Possession of marijuana, Possession of
Methamphetamine. Aggravated stalking. Aggravated battery
on household member, resisting, evading, violation of a
restraining order, obstructing an officer. Vehicular Homicide,
Aggravated DUI, Open Container, Reckless driving. Assault
with a deadly weapon. Assault with intent to commit a
violent felony, with intent to commit mayhem.
The key word here is “mayhem,” spreading through
the internet airwaves across the vast Llano Estacado
where mountains break into mesas and scrub,
dotted with piñon, cut by arroyos and twisty creeks
and a web of old footpaths made by ancestors.
And where the internet’s thousand channels
are offering their social contracts, so
whether you are watching from prison, or at home
in your double-wide, or in the sleep cab of your semi,
or in your townhouse at the city’s edge, or at Urgent Care,
the local laundromat, or in a bar that never closes,
wherever you are watching, you are probably just sitting
(and doing this a lot) tuned to hucksters selling
vacuum cleaners and Jesus, channel by channel:
#9012: Puppy Pooping in the House?
#9013: Thick Hair Guaranteed
#9014: Rev. Run’s Sunday Suppers
#9015: Suffer from Lower Back Pain?
Mayhem being confusion turned to violence or lassitude.
But whether in the lockup looking out,
or among the hardworking folk of the Llano
in adobe-and-stone compounds and corrals
in, say, Ojitos Frios, Tecolote, or Villanueva,
when you see the rain dropping its dark curtains
over the vast plain, some Spenglerian twinge of memory
must arrive … of the massive adobe pueblo at Pecos,
of Coronado with his armored men on horses,
or, later, as the centuries stood still and Spanish dreams collapsed,
of trading with Comanches and learning to hunt buffalo
charging bareback into the stampeding
