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(First) Report on bringing (back) stonesbecause it goes on getting dark for two more months anywaybecause after that it's two months further into the dark before the days are even as long as this one, the day of the time change fall back darkness early darkness darkness coming soon. Ready to leave I went back to my room, looked around carefully for any more rocks that might want to go home to the Pecos. Driving up the Pecos River is always a ceremony, church cliff curve & confluence always familiar, a dance in a sinuous line called Greeting-the-Pecos. This time my car and I dance it to the count of the hours of sun left in this day. Tomorrow the time changes. All I want is to be out in the light, say goodbye to the light and lie on green grass by the river somewhere. So I dance my way up the Pecos, to Willow Creek by the dumps of the Terrero Mine. Goodbye, rocks. First the big one, I totter it over to the north cliff, it came from rather further up but right here will have to be good enough. Then I tuck a plastic baggie in my pocket, lock up the car, ford the creek with the box under my arm. Partway up the dump I empty the box carefully at random. Goodbye, rocks. They look right at home, are mostly so nondescript no one else is likely to carry them away again. I cruise up the dump, looking for pyrite crystals, find hardly any. Perhaps a World Association of Pyrite-Crumb Picker-Uppers collected here lately, and found them all. Anyway all I want is to be out in the light, I knot up the baggie and head the car upriver again. We dance along to the grassy stretch above Rio Mora, and like a miracle here the grass is still partly green. Like a miracle here the grass is still partly green so this must be where today's ceremony of farewell to the light is being held. It is danced on the horizontal near a river. The water chants, while the human participant reads a book in the sun by the river and the automobile patiently waits. As it gets cooler I go to the car for my jacket, and keep reading until the book is finished. The river is still chanting, it is still the last long day; here in the river canyon we are in the shade of mountains between here and home; above and around and elsewhere the sun is shining in the blue sky. Winter is coming. The car and I go home. I set back all the clocks, because tomorrow the time changes. 10/27/90 |
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Issue #8, April, 1999 :
Santa Fe Poetry Broadside.