Dark hair tumbling down the mountain
following snow melt

Familiar footfalls
in places
whose face she does not know.

Stepping over spring flow
on the very same bridge
she never raced across
with playmates as a child.

"What brings you back to the desert you never knew?"
the yesterdaywords of her lover
drift back around her,
laid like a serape
loose but familiar on her shoulders.

She wrapped the words tighter
against her own condensation
which danced in the cold mountain light
and still made no reply but to take
his cupped hand
in her own.

Cousin of the hawks she knows
glides up the mountain
on the breeze
that ripples her hair,

He twists his wingtips,
and dips in acknowledgement.
as he drifts past.

Without words yet for the morning,
they turn and follow
the currentrider.

Streambed becomes their path,
rocky and meandering
like paths they've had
or paths
that have nearly had them.

Path becomes gnarled gaps
through twisted
pinon pine
who have never known
hasty pulse
and decline to accommodate
those who do.

As their tree window shifts,
their beacon hawk
Becomes a pinpoint drifting
left
then right
and back & forth
and finally fades into a cirrus whisper.

Watching him scout his lunch
brings their breakfast to mind.

Wood smoke still infuses their clothes,
making fresh and real
the memory
of eggs, potatoes, bacon and chile
kneaded
and folded together
inside flour tortillas.

Eyes turn and roll
across the serrated foothills,
ridges displaying the rippled
cretaceous days
layered one atop the other
Waited patiently as dinosaurs
sloughed through
shallow seas.

Some voice of home sang then
slow whisperings
that drew the shallows
Into flats
talked the timid hills up into mountains.

Breathed images
drift into today,
wind themselves into tomorrows
as abundant as the yesterdays
Tomorrows wrap themselves
fitted snug to her feet

cool riverbed shallows,
tugging softly at her soul
intimacy insinuated between her toes,
damp sand hissing as she walks
"Sssssstay-sssssstay-sssssstay"

Qualities of place
weaving themselves
amidst her own innateness
swirls of country like smoke
drifting upward.

No stranger
to mad cold
driving rain
choking snow
indifferent hills
savage crags

No stranger to the desert
no novice with desert
- sound
- water
- wilderness
- heat
- silence
- cold
- heart ...

Waterbearer
warmthbearer
windcoolcalm
heartbearer,
the woman of Taos Mountain
follows ridge to crest
and sees the rump of porcupines in the mountain’s bulk,
and superior waters in the high blue sky.

And she who is new here
is she who is still home.

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