Drunks in the Arroyo


I have seen them downtown: dirt on dirt,
a well-worn teeter in the walk. I know
they have seen how quickly I turn away,
ashamed for them at being seen, ashamed
for myself at seeing those so like me
fallen so low. Tonight they’ll meet in an arroyo
outside of town, corralled with this month’s
set of buddies. Some will light illegal fires,
others will be content to let moonlight etch
their faces, blacken their eye-sockets. With
cheery voices they’ll toast each other while
under their stunning breath they will salute
themselves: that’s at first when they are full
of talk. Later, after they have studied the moon
bending through the pale green glass of an up-
turned Tokay bottle, they’ll start the roll call
of compadres fallen or disappeared, the litany
of opportunities missed, the one relationship
for each that gutted them. They will drone on
until their fires fail and their eyelids fall
on what they call sleep. None of them will dream

the truth that an hour ago twenty miles northwest
of town it rained two inches, that forty-five
minutes ago and fifteen miles northeast another
two inches fell, right now eleven miles due north
a record is being set by rain slapping against
the glazed ground which cannot drink it fast
enough, so the water merges and runs where
it has long since run --- through the intricate
veined system of arroyos, heading south.
Only a few drops have fallen here. The drinkers
are dreaming of their mothers clean and dressed
for Sunday when the torrent snatches them up.
Confused, they are rushed, lifted high, tossed
with tree limbs, hurled with rocks, roller
coasting with cholla and flop-eared rabbits,
rattlers threaded through tumbleweed.
Jack Cason and Winston Tsosie die: Cason
wedged under a cutbank, Winston aping Christ
on a cedar. Now on nights when small fires
speckle the arroyos, I can hear mother coyote
warn her young to come home now.