She

She walks through life with music in her head.
Emitting random squeaks and whistles on her inner up beats.
Her soundtrack is boundless, she makes her own music when left to her own devices.

And even songs she has never heard before are comprised of familiar rhythms and harmonies.

She tends towards easy distraction - both cause and affect - and will find herself afloat in the middle of a conversation without an oar.

She has never been good at summarizing. The big picture has never really been her scene. Minutiae makes her more comfortable.

Life is like a syllogism if you let it.

if good music is meant to be danced to. and this song makes her want to dance. it must be good.
even if only for dancing.

She will not dance to Cher.
Well, maybe just a little. But only in her chair. Or, with just one foot.

And she only sings along to Billy Joel with irony in her throat.

Everything else is pretty fair game.
She is like her mother in this respect. She knows she will grow up to embarrass her own children on road trips with the radio on.

But what is a life on the road without songs to sing along to? The open road is made for music.
Her penchant for speeding has a direct correlation to the practice of this theory.

Notes From Taos, A Post Script

Christmas Week 2005. Taos, NM








Belated Birthday Poem For A Fearless Wanderer

I would take you to New Mexico,
where we would walk your dogs along the edge of Volcanitos!
Race breathless up El Pilar to view infinite Earth
from sacred earth.







Old Northern New Mexico

A wilderness of trailer homes, rusted trucks and busted fences.
Barbed into the ashram, ostriches strut on languid legs.
They seem out of place here among these lazy, sprawling dogs.
Good wine may not grow in this desert. But casinos do. And roadside shrines.
And graveyards.
Elaborate crusifixes scattered across the landscape.





One State Over

I tried to call you from the top of Pilar.
But my phone had No Service.
And, although I can see clear to Colorado from here,
I cannot phone to tell you.










Moderate To First Marker

Las Minas Trail.
The first snow we've seen.
Following deer tracks, and signs of other creatures
... further east into the hills.
There should be a mine on Las Minas Trail

Mica. Micaceous. Metamorphic. aluminum silicate Mineral.

I dawdle behind Bird's black leather jacket
collecting rocks and other, Shiny, objects in the pockets of my ratty blue jeans.



Magpies
Damn Birds!
Spend their mornings flitting from woodshed to river
while I run myself ragged.
Chase them from tree to tree with my camera.
Just one shot - blue white wings extended in flight -
before you disappear into the brush.
"They are shy," She tells me.
"They don't like their pictures taken," he agrees.
They nod wisely from the front seat of the car.
Happy with just a glimpse of magpies.









He is

A tall man in a Hobbiton world.
He is a punkrocker.

He is
In hippie hell.

He lumbers through this casita.
He amuses himself at the wood burning stove
in lieu of TV.

I consume books like black grapes
savoring sweet silence.
And then I miss TV too.