Cooper and I are glad to observe slowness of another kind on the eve of a legislative session in Santa Fe.
We could see weird clouds forming to the north.
Cooper and I are glad to observe slowness of another kind on the eve of a legislative session in Santa Fe.
We could see weird clouds forming to the north.
The day began like this.
No Sean Penn. No awkward awards ceremony speeches or tasteless humor. Just blue sky, birds and trees. I did find myself worrying about what BLM might do with the undeveloped open space a few footsteps from my front door but crisp air smoothed my step and now I am back home, turning the page to fiction, although poetry keeps coming to mind.
Couldn’t think of what to say last night. It was just there.
What the heck. Maybe I’ll read “Degrees of gray in Philipsburg” again. It’s been on my mind for months.
Degrees of Gray in Philipsburg
by Richard Hugo
You might come here Sunday on a whim.
Say your life broke down. The last good kiss
you had was years ago. You walk these streets
laid out by the insane, past hotels
that didn’t last, bars that did, the tortured try
of local drivers to accelerate their lives.
…
Only churches are kept up. The jail
turned 70 this year. The only prisoner
is always in, not knowing what he’s done.
The principal supporting business now
is rage. Hatred of the various grays
the mountain sends, hatred of the mill,
The Silver Bill repeal, the best liked girls
who leave each year for Butte. One good
restaurant and bars can’t wipe the boredom out.
The 1907 boom, eight going silver mines,
a dance floor built on springs—
all memory resolves itself in gaze,
in panoramic green you know the cattle eat
or two stacks high above the town,
two dead kilns, the huge mill in collapse
for fifty years that won’t fall finally down.
…
Isn’t this your life? That ancient kiss
still burning out your eyes? Isn’t this defeat
so accurate, the church bell simply seems
a pure announcement: ring and no one comes?
Don’t empty houses ring? Are magnesium
and scorn sufficient to support a town,
not just Philipsburg, but towns
of towering blondes, good jazz and booze
the world will never let you have
until the town you came from dies inside?
…
Say no to yourself. The old man, twenty
when the jail was built, still laughs
although his lips collapse. Someday soon,
he says, I’ll go to sleep and not wake up.
You tell him no. You’re talking to yourself.
The car that brought you here still runs.
The money you buy lunch with,
no matter where it’s mined, is silver
and the girl who serves your food
is slender and her red hair lights the wall.
Cooper and I race the sun to the top of the hill, stopping more often than we used to for me to catch my wind and Coop to take it all in.
I have been to town for lunch with old friends. Over portions we can’t finish, our conversation dwells on retirement finance, heart disease, cancer and hip replacement. But it doesn’t matter. We still crack jokes about our circumstances. Back home, I savor the fact that we have remained friends for more than 4o years.
I stick an emergency aspirin in my pocket before Cooper and I head out. He waits for me to leash him up, accepting my compulsion keep him safe.
We make it to our hilltop and watch clouds lift off the mountain peaks for the first time in a week. Setting sun warms south faces on our way home.
They ain’t busted me yet on coffee and Coop’s got snow. Maybe this year I’ll figure out whether my Pimpernel coasters with Navajo weavings are supposed to go face up or face down.
I really do wish all my family and friends the best of everything, although calendars are not what we’re made of and the truth is I hope for the same every day of the year.
As for Georgia O’Keeffe …
Coming home. Headin’ to bed.
Waking up. Daily bread.
Still cold and creaking.
But “nothing but blue skies do I see.”
House finches stocked up before the storm.
It came in fast, right about noon.
Some fellows are suited for the weather.
Then there are birds of a feather.
Some just like to stay inside together.
No sunset views tonight. We may be snowed in by first light.
Thanks to nmPBS, I made it to Royal Albert Hall before going to bed.
But neither am I sure that I belong in heaven.
We had 7.5 inches by Sunday at 11.
Cooper shamed me for dragging my feet and finally we started up the hill.
We have to stop every few minutes because one of us refuses to wear boots, but it’s also a ruse to stay on the loose.
Eventually, we make it to the saddle, but my buddy takes his time. 
He always wants to know who else is about, and today we notice the neighbors beat us out.
Went for a walk to ward off winter gray.
Good old Sandias. Good old Coop. Good old Redondo. Good old mesas. Good old moon rise. Good old sunset.
The path was the same, but the light wasn’t as golden as the night before.
I should have been cheerier because I had a warm house to return to and plenty of food. But it was cold and and it didn’t help that a well pump failed. I started the day by reading about PARCC test performances of New Mexico schools and New Mexico unemployment. I couldn’t shake the old solstice sense of dark days and famine looming.
Coop had to make do with remnants of snow. The Stonehenge in my view was another new house on the ridge. The last thing I read before heading out the door was about conifers dying because of climate change.
How chilling it must have been when change came to Chaco. And damn that the Chacoan equivalent of the Apple Watch was lost to consumer hordes.
We are very fortunate at dreamranch, but there are a couple of things on our holiday wish list.
More posole.
More snow.
dreamranch 