As Mourning Doves Persist

The distraction of disbelief is large. Broad as the sea from a single woman’s perch, staring out and across at only blue. The possible dissolve is not easy to strip down or shake off. Hole in the sturdy  back of baby planet. Right before the eyes of all who have nurtured the communal body to carry her the distance. Shivering now in the delayed projections of freeze ahead.  Or of heat. What can I possibly pen to my father today who taught me about protest? About acceptance and tolerance. It’s challenging enough to form encouraging words for my daughter, repeating what I have learned about how to treat others according to the Golden Rule. Fortunately, she understands and took to the streets last night to march with others in outrage and  dissidence. Marking the poster board of her disbelief with halting words, crawling on the front hood of a stranger’s car for witness. And so the volcano wind of the unexpected blows across the sea. Onto the ocean where my father lives. A

There, a memorial on the corner to three teens killed as their coach drove them home from a tournament. The other anxious driver, reckless, failing to halt. Timeless  photographs on filigree crosses at the intersection. And here, a tattered man with a sign in his hands in the grocery parking lot. Cardboard indicating that any kind of work would do. There’s a certain stretch of road coming home from Vegas where one brother nearly died. His broken neck mended with halo and surgical screws. There, where another did succumb. Motorcycle forgetting to curve at Cimarron. Internal compass cracked, or perhaps, ignored. Alcohol poured onto the fire of what he finally could not forgive.

O noble capitol     house that Peralta built    you are long inhabited      fortress and palace promenade If trees could talk     they would whisper handfuls   multi-tongued through thick adobe walls     Spanish    Tiwa    Tewa    bugle of Confederates and curators talking of lattice and lace    wide dining table for history     you whisper us into a prince’s room Old is the adjective     First born on the square Fringed by burros carting firewood to winter casas Occupation is your middle name    Po’ Pay’s revenge for all the icons taken         Wallace’s respite muse crucifixion written in secret light Fiestas in the front yard      Wagons in the courtyard Yellow leaves still falling as legislators eased horses into stables lined      anxious washboards Your inhabitants changed like stunning sunsets and chilly dawns    Today a concho belt of natives own your long stoop     years inlaid with abalone and coral    All eyes shaded by anc

Wolf Creek ski run opened today, earliest reported snowfall in the mountains in October. I vacation with five women and outside our rooms the steam off the Mother Pool spills a thick silvery liquid like mercury. Nimbostratus hover like crumpled painter’s drop cloth stained periwinkle and peach above the cold river periphery and quieted lights on the Mexican restaurant across the street where the bartender hasn’t yet begun pouring tequila or beer. Deanna says there’s a Patsy Cline tribute in town tonight to benefit an art museum named after a local watercolorist and it’s all happening on Fritz and Mabel Place. I chuckle at the street name, deciding whether to take a fourth trip down to the hot springs or simply nap. Then my daughter telephones sobbing of the inevitable break-up from her first love, and my husband claims on another line that he can navigate this as I am too far away to be able to do anything, really. Still I assure her this experience will eventually unfurl ki