SANTIAGO DE HUATA – SEVEN MONTHS HOME

Pre-Incan sunlight bronzes the afternoon
And climbs the slopes of Huata ahead of me,
Looking for ruins.

I follow seams of broken walls, mazing
Up the fields left to fallow centuries
Near the shards of a great highway.
Above the town,

My breath becomes the wind – Andean thin.
I hear flutes. The walls run in harmonies,
Stone upon stone, small voices buried with
Monolith and bone.

The spirit of some bare-backed beast has taught me
To seek: there are temples, there are cities,
There are kings. They await the restoration
Of all things.

Unbound faces with bright obsidian eyes,
Burnished wind-bruised cheeks, hand-woven laughter,
Flinting shy smiles.

I rush to meet them on just the next ridge
And find myself--here on the edge and sigh
To where the sun sinks like golden treasure
To the depths of Lake Titicaca, lingers,
Blazes, and still breathes over and under
The ancient sky.

(Provo, Utah, January 1979)

GREAT AUNT ELIZABETH

Dresser scarf drapes across her toiletries
Like unexpected snow. I start to dust,
Place the fine cloth where it belongs, beneath
The cool mirror and the Jean Nate bath set.

She lies between the unpressed linen sheets
And will not let me touch her when it hurts.
Fearing my silence is the cause of her pain,
I sit by her and ask, "Are you sleeping?"
She answers with a squint, "No, dear." We read
Until I cannot hold still or keep awake.

Once in a while she lets me bathe her feet.
They are firm as the inside of good shoes.
When washed they look smaller, as if they had
Dissolved like soap into softened water.

Her hair is a fragile, breathless halo
Falling, the fluff of a ripe dandelion.
I soothe it, and now she makes a circle
Of the captured white, winds it on her finger
Like the ring of her life. I say goodnight.

(Spring 1976 Tucson, Arizona)