Taos 2004: Adobe and Magpies

I go down 25, from Pueblo, and get off at Walsenburg,

Heading south, still, but west,

Into New Mexico.

Early afternoon and the light is harsh,

Flattening the changing winter landscape,

And the colors of the desert as it deepens

Are like no winter colors I’ve ever seen, but here,

In New Mexico.

Back roads twist, steep and narrow,

Past remote adobe churches perched on rocks,

The Madonna in repose in the nave; I don’t have to go in

To know where she is.

I start to come down out of the hills and see, below,

Smoke lifting from low adobe outposts

Hugging the floor of the desert.

I pass rusted pick-up trucks and falling-down corrals.

The earth is pink and the entire sky begins to turn purple—

There is no west at sunset

In New Mexico.

Low green sage bushes clump with snow and

In the pass before Taos, a squall whips around the car;

I slow to a crawl, seeing just the cloak of white.

Coming round the bend, snow stops,

Late afternoon light blooms over the mountains, and

There is Taos.

Next morning, I sit with coffee, wrapped in blankets.

From the balcony of the old adobe inn,

Again I watch smoke rising from adobe houses

Scattered in the distance behind me;

Rising from the Pueblo on the outskirts of Taos.

The valley smells of fire—mesquite and pinon—

Burning in the kivas and the kitchen hearths,

And it is the deepest imaginable quiet,

A hundred miles of quiet in the frigid early morning.

Magpies interrupt my repose; scolding, quarreling,

Calling; flitting from fence to fence,

Tree to tree, a racket I don’t mind.

Far from the chaos of home, a backdrop for the

Slow settling of my bones and breath,

High desert consolation, black and white,

Magpies startle against the blinding of blue New Mexico sky.