style="font-size:15px;"> o paris, venice, moscow, buenos aires, saigon, kuala lumpur:
we are sailing up the wine-dark
river.
Impressions of the New Mexico Legislature
The lieutenant governor sits in the center
behind an oak desk. Below him, the reader of bills
reads at thirty miles per hour to pass or defeat
a bill depending on his cue.
One senator
talks on the phone to Miss Española; another, a thug,
opens his briefcase, takes out a bottle
of whiskey, a shot glass, and begins drinking.
Bills from various committees are meanwhile passed
without comment. Finally, a bill is introduced,
and the lieutenant governor asks that the
content be explained.
A senator rises, speaks
into a microphone: “Bill 345-B is one of my most
important pieces of legislation. It commemorates
J.D. Arguello and H.R. Lucero who died last year
while firefighting. It also specifically commends
Victor de la Cruz who is now crippled.”
Another
senator rises, introduces a bill to change the
composition of the podiatrists’ board. Two members
of the public are to be on it. The lieutenant
governor asks what the requirements for the public
are. One senator quips, “Athlete’s foot,” is
out of order, and is silenced.
The senators quickly
agree that one member of the public is sufficient.
The lieutenant governor says, “All those in favor
may say ‘aye,’ those opposed may raise their feet.”
Cedar Fires
Cedar fires burn in my heart.
You speak of emeralds, cocaine, and henna.
You are slow rain fragrant in the eucalyptus,
in the silver leaves.
At night we look out at the Pleiades.
I think of the antelope carved in the rock
at Puyé: carved, perhaps, seven hundred
years ago. And, now, we touch the Pleiades.
For two weeks, seven hundred years,
cedar fires burn in my heart.
The Murmur
The doctor flicks on a light,
puts up the X-rays of our three-day-old child,
and diagnoses a shunt between
left and right ventricle,
claims an erratic electrocardiogram test
confirms his findings. Your child,
he says, may live three to six weeks unless
surgery is performed.
Two days later, a pediatric cardiologist
looks at the same X-rays and EKG test,
pronounces them normal,
and listens with disinterest to the murmur.
I think, then, of the birth:
mother and child in a cesarean,
the rush of blood in the umbilical cord
is a river pulsating with light.
And, as water rippling in a pond
ricochets off rocks, the network of
feelings between father and mother
and child is an ever-shifting web.
It is nothing on your doctor’s X-ray
scanner; but, like minerals lit up
under a black light, it is an iridescent
red and green and indigo.
The Corona
Knife-edge
days and shimmering nights.
Our child watches the shifting sunlight and leaves.
The world shimmers, shimmers.
Smoke goes up the flue,
and spins, unravels in the wind.
Something in me unravels after long thought.
And my mind flares:
as if the sun and moon lock in an eclipse,
and the sun’s corona flares out.
It is a fire
out of gasoline and rags
that makes us take nothing for granted.
And it is love, spontaneous,
flaring,
that makes us feel
like a cougar approaching a doe in labor,
makes us pause and move on.
