Taos Elegy

Sunrise: Sangre de Cristo Mts.
6:30 a.m.

Clouds like tattered rags
squat as furrowed shaman brows
over heights of lava rock and shale,
bested by Spanish conquest of
Don Fernando, yet eternal still
to endure.

A ragged coyote limps across
a field, turns warily eyeing
down Cam Del Paseo Pueblo Norte,
trotting dust into spirit clouds.

Seraphic cherub sits
on marble tombstone,
chubby chin on palm
brooding over a child’s
collection
of toys:

Matchbox cars, toy soldiers
and a plastic dinosaur.

Daughter: Mercedes E. Avila
1920-1945
sleeps like desert doll beneath
wooden frame of fence pickets.
Gopher holes tunnel
a labyrinthine network
around her,
bonding
the
living
with the dead.

Taos, New Mexico
(April 9, 2016)